I decided for this week to change directions, and analyze an object other than my Oxfords. Looking around my room trying to find something worthwhile, my mind drifted towards my closet yet again. My consistent predilection toward the items in my closet seems to be a common theme; something I never expected to realize from this class. I’ve been drawn most strongly towards my clothing consistently throughout the semester, something that has both surprised me and worried me. Anyhow, perusing through my closet, I was drawn to my plaid scarf out of everything I saw, and decided to write about it in depth for this week.

My plaid scarf has always been a mystery. I had only recently acquired it over this past Winter intersession at home, going through old boxes in my basement. I saw it peeking out from underneath a whole bunch of my mother’s old clothes, and decided to take it (with her permission of course). It is curiously made, with horizontal seems that break the scarf’s length into several sections, which perplexed me. It is also frayed on its ends, a style that I knew definitely wasn’t popularized until at least the 2000’s, and so being that this scarf is from before that time I was confused. I didn’t really think much about it, and just took the scarf with me back to school for the Spring semester, where it is now hanging in my closet alongside my coat.

To help gain a better understanding of the scarf and its origin, I called my mother on Wednesday night and inquired about her formally abandoned scarf. It took her a while to remember the scarf I was talking about, I went on for 10 minutes describing it to her, and had to eventually just send her a picture of it from my phone. Once she remembered the exact one I was talking about, she divulged.

Apparently, the scarf was originally my grandmother’s school uniform skirt. My grandmother Joan, a sweet and quintessential Mancunian, used to wear it to her primary school in the late 1950’s. It was later re-purposed by my grandmother after she moved on to secondary school and her uniform changed. Its unusual hemming and frayed edges were just left over from the haphazard attempt of a 13 year old school girl to turn her skirt into a scarf. Maybe an act of defiance, or maybe an act of sheer boredom; I will never know. However makeshift, its convenient plaid pattern suited it well as a scarf back then, and even today too as the style has transcended time and is still considered urbane. After my grandmother used the scarf throughout her secondary school and university years, my mother inherited it as a child growing up in London. Since then it has found its way to New York City, and into a tattered cardboard box in my basement where I ultimately found it.

Have dug deeper into the origins of my scarf, I wear it now with a better understanding of its past. With both a weird and interesting connection to my English roots,  the scarf is one of the only real things I can think of that I have in my possession from my mother’s side of the family. It connects me, in whatever form, to my grandmother as a young child in her school years, and to the entire era surrounding her life back then. I also think it’s very interesting how it is a recycled piece, and wonder whether it was re-purposed out of need, because of the culture back then, or just for convenience. Anyhow, I wear it now with a better appreciation for what it actually is and where it comes from.

Bizarre hem