Patti Smith’s clothes returned decades later: How our stuff can take us back
You may already have heard the story of how Patti Smith got some old clothes back on Sunday night.
Smith was at Dominican University in River Forest talking about her new memoir when a woman in the audience stood up and said she had some things that belonged to Smith.
The woman went to the stage and handed her a plastic bag. Inside were items Smith hadn’t seen in almost 40 years.
Among them were a T-shirt; a sheer top Smith had worn on a Rolling Stone cover as a young punk rocker; and a bandanna that had belonged to her late brother. The items, it seems, had been in a truck stolen from Smith’s band after a performance in Chicago in 1979.
Where that stuff went all those years ago, and the route it took back to its owner, remain murky, but the point is, Smith’s old clothes came home.
Smith choked up a little at the sight. Some people in the audience got misty. So have people who’ve only heard the tale.
What strikes me about this story, beyond the surprise and oddity of it all, is the emotion it has evoked, and some of that emotion has to do with the power of old clothes.
Clothes travel with us through relationships and events, though time. We sweat in our clothes, breathe in them. The best clothes feel like skin.
Noreen Bender said for decades she has kept a sheer top, a remembrance cloth and other accessories tucked away in a Bob Dylan merchandise bag, waiting for just the moment to return the items to her idol.
Bender, 56, finally got the chance Sunday at Dominican University, where punk rocker Patti…
Noreen Bender said for decades she has kept a sheer top, a remembrance cloth and other accessories tucked away in a Bob Dylan merchandise bag, waiting for just the moment to return the items to her idol.
Bender, 56, finally got the chance Sunday at Dominican University, where punk rocker Patti…
(Tracy Swartz)
Like time itself, clothes come and go, and when they go we tend to forget them. But — if you’re like me — there are some clothes you’ll always remember and a few that you keep as a way to remember.
I give away almost everything I haven’t worn for a while, and yet tucked at the back of my closet are half a dozen items that have survived for years, through several moves, changing styles and closet purges.
There’s a ratty marathon T-shirt and the first proper coat I bought when I moved to Chicago.
There’s a very short mint-green skirt I bought in California the day I headed off in my Honda Civic, alone, to work in Florida. I wore it all the way across the country.
There’s a long, flowered dress I bought for $19 in London the first time I went to England. I wore it until it wore out.
Every now and then, reaching into the closet, I’ll glimpse one of those souvenirs, and when I do, I see my 20-something self flit by. More than any photograph, they remind me of who I was then, help stitch fragments of time together.
A lot of people hang on to an item or two of clothing that represents where they’ve been, how they’ve felt, someone they’ve loved.
“I still have a T-shirt I bought in San Francisco on our honeymoon,” reported Ed Zurek, one of the Facebook friends who answered my query on this topic. “I never wear it but it reminds me of how we first started our journey.”
“My son had an old flannel jacket which he wore constantly,” wrote Assir R. DaSilva. “After he was killed in an armed robbery I have hung on to that jacket and worn it for over a decade and a half.”
Tim Steil keeps his old flight jacket.
“Still has the Multi-National Peacekeeping Force Beirut Lebanon patch on one side, and my Aircrew wings, name and rank on the other,” he wrote. “I’ve folded it up and used it as a pillow, slept on the floor of planes and just pulled it over my head to try to keep out the light and noise. It’s gone through four continents, a helluva a lot of flight hours, and it has never failed me once.”
Other items people reported hanging on to: a pair of old clogs, a gym suit, a sweater knit by a grandmother.
“A scarf I bought to wear to my first concert, which was Elton John,” wrote Lori Malinski. “I can remember exactly what I wore, but the scarf is the only item I still have, and I wear it often.”
The clothes that prompt the most vivid memories and evoke the most emotion tend to be ones we wore when we were young.
What was returned to Patti Smith in that bag wasn’t just stuff, it was the past made tangible. That’s what old clothes, the right old clothes, supply, even if you didn’t wear them on the cover of Rolling Stone.
Twitter @MarySchmich
Leave a Reply