I love vintage clothing.

You wear my jeans for a few years and soften them up for me.

I like the quest of digging through piles of cast-offs to find that one beaded 1950s sweater that belonged to your aunt’s next-door neighbor. I like shoes that are broken in. I like fabrics that don’t pill – so if it’s old, and pill-free, I know it’s been tested and won’t pill for me either.

(By the way, whoever donated to Goodwill that 1940s silk, dressing gown in pale raspberry with the split sleeves and the embroidered hem - thank you! I look mahvelous in it, dahling!)

I don’t like looking like a catalogue, even if it’s a high-end catalogue. I like what you no longer like or never liked.

(Thank you Lutheran church member who dropped off the 1950s blue and white check sundress with the appliqued cherries on the bodice!)

I love flannel that’s been washed 100 times.

Since I don’t have time or Tide to wash new flannel that many times, I’ll take your old red-plaid jammies that you gave to the church rummage sale.

I don’t mind darning that one little hole at the elbow in exchange for the supreme softness caused by all those washings I didn’t have to do. And, if they fit me now, they will always fit me -- they've shrunk all they were going to shrink by the time I bought them.

(Thank you Bonita Romeo -- your camp identification was in those red jammies -- for my most favorite pair of jammies in the world.)

I wear a fur coat, raccoon, without shame. After all, the raccoons who make up my coat were born in the 1930s. Fair game, so to speak, to wear them 70 plus years later.

(LRP I hope you don't mind --I had your coat re-lined and put my own monogram inside. Thanks for taking exquisite care of my coat all those years until I could find it on a rack in a consignment store!)

My boots never hurt. My clothes' colors never run. I never go to a party and find my outfit on anyone else. I’m never in style. I’m never really out of style.

I’m vintage style.

(A great big shout out to the Burberry Trench Coat owner who never wore it even once, plastic loop protectors still in place and traces of the original fold that the store clerk must have made when she put it in the bag for you to take home.)

So keep buying armloads of clothing, wear them a few times or fifty times. Bring them to the consignment shop or drop them off at Salvation Army. Have a tag sale or just drop the hefty bags off on my front porch, I don't mind. I'll sort and sift through all your ex-outfits and create my own.

( A very huge thank you to the woman who left a $20 bill in the pocket of the khaki leather mini-skirt I bought at Goodwill.)

I now have enough cash to buy my spring wardrobe...