What's the Oldest Thing in Your Closet?
What's the oldest thing in your closet? Not that holy grail thrift from Goodwill, I'm talking about the piece that you've owned for the longest and still wear to this day. Consumer fashion today is defined by rapid trend cycles and fast fashion. With companies like Rent the Runway and Depop changing how we consume and keep clothing, I'm interested in what’s stood the test of time in my peers' wardrobe.
Like many college students around the country, I’ve been living at home since quarantine began. One of the many joys of living off of a suitcase of clothes meant to last a month is returning to my wardrobe from high school, and sometimes even earlier. Often the clothes I left behind at home were the camp t-shirts relegated to pajama duty, and the B-grade sweatpants that are reserved only for trips to 7-11 or the grocery store.
I began thinking about clothes from that era that I took with me to college, pieces that withstood my style phases, snap trends, and truly grew with me to fit in my style today. Sometimes these are pieces that seem simple at the surface but carry more meaning, like the navy tank top that used to be dress-coded by middle school teachers and is now something I throw on to feel confident and casual. Most of the time, it’s just humor and nostalgia that keeps me wearing these pieces, like a pair of white crocs festooned with jibbitz that I got ironically in high school and wear as driving shoes today (if you can get over the fact that I have designated driving shoes).
After talking to fellow Cal students’ about their clothes, most people named hand-me-downs as the oldest pieces in their closets that they still wear today. I heard about classic 90s looks handed down through parents, with stories of immigration, identity, and futures woven throughout. Clothes tell stories of good memories, cross-country moves, shrinking budgets, and expanding tastes. I loved seeing how pieces from 20 or 30 years ago have held up today without a tear or stain. This contrasts so heavily with today’s fast fashion ecosystem, where trend pieces don’t last longer than a season. Keep reading to peek into the closets of five of your fellow Cal bears.
Ebru Odok
Hometown: Orlando, Florida
Instagram: @ebruodok
Major: Computer Science + Data Science
Year: Junior
Style snapshot: Preppy, girly, tennis-inspired with a healthy dose of tiktok trends.
The oldest thing in Ebru Odok’s closet that she still wears today is her mom’s pleated white tennis skirt from the mid 80s. I sat down with Ebru and her mom over Zoom to ask them about the piece now pushing 30 years in their family.
Ebru showed off the skirt in our call, explaining the origin story:
“It [was] my mom’s! From the mid-80s, she was like 26, and my great aunt brought it for her from America, brought it home to Turkey with a tennis racket, and she wore it to play tennis on the weekends”
Ebru’s mom continues: “At the time I was married and I was working, so it was after college. We didn’t have tennis courts everywhere so we used to go to my college on weekends to play tennis and I used to wear it. I love that skirt.”
The skirt is a “sportsy” material, and Ebru wears it to play tennis, but also mixes it up with graphic t-shirts and preppy sweaters. She found it in her mom’s closet when she was 16, when the American Apparel tennis skirt was doing its rounds.
When asked about how her mom’s fashion influences her, Ebru explains: “We have different styles, but she taught me well with taste.”
According to her mother, Ebru is allowed to take “anything she likes” from her closet. She says, “It feels fantastic that she likes something I have.”
Ebru chimes in: “I definitely do my fair share of borrowing from her closet.”
The skirt has been through gamedays in Berkeley, peach picking in Atlanta, trips to Chicago, and amusement parks in Orlando. I’m surprised it's held up for this long, but it goes to show how fast fashion has controlled how often we buy clothes and what our expectations for quality and longevity are these days.
Both Ebru and her mother said that if they saw this while shopping today, they would buy it.
Arani Acharya
Hometown: Kolkata, India and Phoenix, Arizona
Instagram: @sriracharya
Major: Physics
Minor: Math
Year: 1st year PhD student at Stanford, Cal class of 2020
Style snapshot: Physics TA meets metalhead.
Like Ebru, Arani is wearing the oldest piece in his closet to our Zoom interview -- a maroon polo sweater. We chatted about how folks from Kolkata (our shared origin city) dress for cold weather. You wouldn’t think that Indian people dress for winter -- but there’s a distinctive style of layering we love that Arani carries into his wardrobe here. The story of Arani’s sweater starts in Howrah, India, where Arani’s father grew up working in an iron factory. After finishing at the top of his class in the University of Calcutta, he got an opportunity to do his PhD in the United States. An opportunity, Arani explains, that changed the course of his life. His parents, newly married, left India for Orlando, Florida in 1990. Arani’s dad bought the longsleeve polo from a thrift store sometime during his PhD. They moved around the US before settling in Phoenix, and had Arani. “I guess the shirt stayed with us this entire time,” he says, recounting both the sweater’s history and his family’s. “Then 25 years later, my mother gives it to me.”
Arani keeps it simple when explaining why he still wears it to this day: “I wear it because It's one of the few nice articles of clothing I own, and I feel like i look good when I wear it.”
It’s crazy to me that Arani’s been wearing this sweatshirt during his PhD just like his father before him -- speaking once again to the longevity of vintage affordable clothing that might be disappearing from similarly-priced fashion today.
Avani Shah
Hometown: Aurora, Illinois
Major: Public Health
Year: Sophomore
Style snapshot: 70’s inspired, loves wide leg pants and structured layers.
The oldest thing in Avani’s closet is a red and black Chaps windbreaker from the 90s. Her parents bought it from a Macy’s in Sunnyvale, California for a trip to Lake Tahoe around 1998-99. As her family moved to Illinois, it was relegated to the coat storage that every midwestern family has in their basement (as a midwesterner, I can confirm).
Around sophomore year of high school, windbreakers got big and Avani dug the jacket out of storage. It was the perfect addition to her football game fit of skinny jeans and converse. As the self-proclaimed “friend who carries everything,” the jacket had big, roomy pockets that could handle her phone, keys, wallet, and even a small water bottle.
The jacket has a definite sporty vibe, and she loves that it adds an effortless look to almost any outfit. She likened it to something Sloane Peterson (Ferris Bueller's girlfriend) would wear. Not limiting its use to just athleisure looks, Avani tossed it over business formal dresses and blazers at Speech and Debate competitions in high school. She laughs while remembering looking at herself in the mirror at a particular tournament and thinking, “I look like a mobster’s wife.”
Avani’s style has changed since high school, exploring her own tastes through thrift and vintage stores. She describes the jacket as “one of those things I can't imagine going out of style.”
At home during quarantine the jacket has been reclaimed as family property, used by anyone who needs an extra layer when they’re stepping out.
Omar Khan
Hometown: Petaluma, California
Instagram: @omarkhan902
Major: Electrical Engineering & Computer Science
Year: Senior
Style snapshot: Black and white monochrome, with the occasional striped tee.
The oldest item Omar still wears is a University of Rome sweatshirt bought out of pure necessity, which has become a closet staple. It was Spring Break 2016 and he was on vacation with his family in Italy. “It was cold as hell,” he recounts, “and we were just freezing.”. In a spur of the moment purchase, Omar picked up the first sweater he found in a random shop in Rome. He’s worn it so consistently since then that it's been used to identify him out of a crowd. Omar’s a TA for a CS61B, a lower div computer science course with upwards of 1,000 students enrolled every semester. Once, one of Omar’s students couldn’t remember his TA’s name on the exam, so he wrote “I don't know his name but he wears a University of Rome sweatshirt all the time” on his midterm. If Omar was a cartoon character, he would probably be wearing this sweatshirt in every episode.
A common theme throughout everyone I interviewed, memories tend to cling to these articles. On that spring break trip, his older brother found out he got into Berkeley, and the sweater reminds Omar of his own days on campus. “I kind of miss it, I wish I had it with me right now.”
Peyton White
Hometown: Mountain View, California
Major: Society and Environment
Minors: Dance and Performance Studies, Public Policy, Global Studies
Year: Junior
Style snapshot: Minimalist neutrals with elevated accessories, see: Alexa Chung, Maggie Rogers.
Peyton’s wearing the oldest thing in her closet during our Zoom call. It’s an oversized white tee with Snoopy playing a saxophone on Telegraph Ave. She’s a Bay Area local whose father went to Berkeley. He got the shirt in Berkeley in the 80s and wore it throughout college. Peyton started wearing it when she was pretty young: “when I was a kid I would go into his closet and take his sweatshirts and t-shirts and sleep in them.” The shirt is so worn now, it's soft and practically see-through.
She tells me its pure coincidence that she hung on to this particular shirt and ended up going to Cal. “It’s been in the back of my closet since I was maybe like, 5 years old.”
Freshman year the cute graphic t-shirt made its way to Peyton’s dorm, and she really only started wearing it outside of the house last year.
The shirt is unique in Peyton’s collection of Cal gear because it exemplifies “a time past of Berkeley, that [she’s] never experienced.” Especially being at home so far from Berkeley, I can relate to missing the sights and sounds of Telegraph that make Berkeley such a unique and historic college town.
If Peyton were to see this in a thrift shop today, she probably wouldn’t buy it. “Part of why I love it is because of the sentimental value… Also, it’s fun to be walking on Sproul and be like, my dad was wearing this when he was walking in the same place.”
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After listening to all of these heartwarming and nostalgic stories from Berkeley students, I’m thinking more about how fast fashion has robbed us not only of the longevity and quality of clothing, but also the memories gained from passing a piece through generations of family. Those of us from different cultures might recognize this practice in traditional garments -- as a Bengali-American immigrant my parents have passed down handwoven sarees as old as two generations. As we look towards sustainable fashion practices, will the clothes we buy in college be around 20, 30 years from now? (I’m side-eyeing my Uniqlo jeans at the moment...).
Hopefully these stories inspire you to dig into your closets during quarantine and find the pieces that bring back good memories and inspire new trends.
Words by Chirasree Mandal
Photos by Jenna Wong and Lilian Zhou