The piece of clothing you have owned for years and simply refuse to get rid of, functional or not

[Dark Hawk]

Everyone has one, an item of clothing well past its sensible lifespan, faded, stretched, possibly holed, that you have flatly refused to throw away despite every reasonable argument for doing so. Tell us about yours and mount whatever defence you have, logical or entirely emotional

The reasons these survive are rarely about the clothing itself, it is almost always attached to something, a period of life, a person, an achievement, a feeling of comfort so specific that no newer replacement item has ever managed to replicate it despite objectively superior condition

There is a real comedy in how these items get treated by the rest of the household, banished to gardening duty, hidden from visitors, quietly rescued from donation piles more than once, the clothing equivalent of an ageing pet that everyone agrees should probably not still be around and nobody can bring themselves to actually remove

So confess your item, how long you have had it, the state it is genuinely in, and the actual reason underneath the jokes, because these things usually reveal more about what a piece of clothing means to us than any fashion choice ever could

[BrayWyatt_WCW]

A jumper from a partner who is no longer around, faded and slightly too big now, rescued from a donation pile twice by me personally, the actual reason is obvious and I am not even slightly ashamed of it

[Amber90]

Rescuing something from donation not once but twice is the clearest possible sign an item has stopped being clothing and started being something closer to an artefact, completely understandable and not something to explain away

[ShawnMichaels99]

A t shirt from an event I completed at a difficult time in my life, now holed and faded beyond any reasonable wear, banished to gardening duty officially but I still find excuses to wear it underneath other clothes sometimes

[Jonathan]

The banished to gardening duty but secretly still worn underneath everything else pattern is extremely common and extremely relatable, official retirement and actual retirement are apparently two very different things

[Annie71]

A hoodie from university that has genuinely disintegrated at this point, more hole than fabric in places, kept purely because no replacement has ever managed the exact same specific comfort despite being objectively worse in every measurable way

[Amber Tiger]

No replacement matching the exact comfort of the original despite being objectively worse is such a common defence in this thread, comfort apparently does not respond to logic or new purchase price at all

[BankHolidayBlues]

A pair of boots I have resoled twice rather than replace, purely because they fit a body that has changed shape over the years in ways new boots would need relearning from scratch, practical AND sentimental at the same time

[Brooke_19]

Resoling rather than replacing for genuinely practical fit reasons is the rare entry in this thread with an actual functional argument behind it, most of us are working from pure emotion and you have brought evidence

[NinaVrina]

A cardigan that belonged to a parent, worn threadbare at the elbows, kept purely because it is one of the last things that still smells faintly of them even after all this time, no logical argument required or wanted

[QuietObserver34]

This thread has quietly become one of the most moving on the whole board, half of these are really about grief and memory wearing the disguise of a laundry conversation, the clothing was never really the point for most of us here