Highly Recommended: Planet Money’s T-Shirt Project

If you haven’t already seen it, the Planet Money series on the life of a t shirt is absolutely fascinating (as is the companion piece on the afterlife of said shirt). Since my grandmother was an expert seamstress and her family were like many of that era, thrifty and capable of stretching the life of a piece of clothing, I was taught an an early age to treat clothes as something to pass on and reuse. For instance, my grandmother turned my mother’s dress from the ’80s into a nightgown that I (and then my younger cousin) wore in the ’90s…sometime in the ’00s, I heard that it had gone to the child of another cousin.

However, as I got older, I became (as many American teenagers do) pretty used to the disposability of cheaply made, mall-acquired clothing. I did donate my clothing (and still do), but I found myself buying things that weren’t as well constructed and might only last me a year or two.

Now, as an adult, I’m more aware of my habits, and I do try to buy things that will last me awhile (much to the chagrin of some of my friends who would never pay so much for a coat or a dress)…so that I’m less likely to give things away as often. However, I do still end up giving away a lot of clothes…which I can only hope live fascinating second lives like the ones described on All Things Considered (linked above).

I’d like to tell you that there’s some moral change or shift that’s come from watching the series, but that would be disingenuous. I can only say for certain that it’s made me more aware of the extremely complex economic and socioeconomic forces at play in the long journey of textiles and clothing. Oh, and it’s made me very much want to wear a martini-drinking squirrel on my chest.