I think it was Coco Chanel who said, that old clothes are like old friends - one cannot live without them. I suppose the good lady talks naturally about couture clothes, not the stuff one buys in H&M or at Zara. Old clothes are worth a good thought. In the end it is this stuff, we tend to wear most of the everydays of our lives.
Do face it: when you open your wardrobe, then most probably you have admit, that you wear all over and over again always the same old friends. Apparently there are studies, that we out of habit wear only about 20 % of the clothes we harbour and hamster in all possible places. Makes sense, as the times, where one had to change from a morning dress into a lunch ensemble, followed by an afternoondress and get changed for dinner again are long and sadly gone. Would not fit our modern times and timetables... Good golden times...
There are clothes which are simple foolproof - we love them, they are our basics and we can throw them on without even thinking about what we do. A grey jacket, for example - good for everything, from an evening in the Opera or your bussiness dinner and also with jeans good for a stroll in the park. Those basics make the skeleton of our wardrobe. In the best case basics are really your best friends. And as it is the case with best friends, we should care about them. What is different: old friends normally are not discarded when worn out - thanks God! As Coco Chanel was talking about timeless couture pieces, this principle may apply to those clothes too. Unless you change your figure dramatically..
In the 18th century (only in England?) it was somewhat bad taste to wear sparkling new clothes - I speak of the leisure classes, of course. As clothes indeed are still an indicator of class, sorry. This habit has come down to us, fresh and sound. There are always the lovely old tweedjackets, which get better and better with age. Or the old cashmere pullover, which has some inbuilt aircondition with all the holes in it. Or the good old "Church"es, hopefully inherited from your grandfather and cherished for their inimitable colour after 40 years of cleaning with several colours of shoepaste. Or the leatherjacket, which looks the part only after two generations having worn them. Those are real friends, never to be parted with. I bet, as soon as you have found a substitute and got rid of the old thing, you never ever wear the new pullover with the same glee as you did the old one. Try it! I bet.
But then there are other old clothes: the horrible ones, mostly used out of indifference for one´s own pleasure and housed in a crammed wardrobe of equal antiquity. They are still "good",ie no holes and all the buttons intact and therefore have to be worn - despite of offending all around you, because the yellow colour of the old poloshirt really does nothing for your complexion, or the cut of the jacket was in the hight of fashion in the early 1980ies, but this revival is to be expected only in 2045. Old worn shoes fall in the same category for women. Likewise plastic trousers, hanging on your stately figure long out of shape, but comfortable. Take a hard look at your old clothes and divide good from simply old. Good exercise, for sure.
I have seen in my time some wardrobes, crammed with clothes, which were only fit for the bin - inspite of horrible high pricetags at the time of aquisition. The only remedy here is ruthless throwing out and weeding. Just imagine that good old Kate would have got married in the meringuedress of her dead mom in law?
So, just get over it and dispose what has had its time and is not worth being kept and loved and worn until the very end. Those get-rid-offs have had their time and deserve a good recycling. Best fate for them: to ressurect as something new/odd/happy for someone who really loves it. One never knows!
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