This is not an entirely new subject for this blog, but it's worth returning to.
What do you do with your blownout shirts? I have about a dozen shirts with elbow holes (some discreet and subtle, others ragged and shredded "like wizard's sleeve"...BORAT). Some are/were cool shirts: worn-down pink oxfords, subtle windowpane dress shirts appropriate for an interview or oral argument at court, or do-it-all white broad collars from Brooks.
I wear them all semi-regularly, usually rolling up the sleeve to prevent appearing more disheveled than usual. Sometimes I conceal the sleeve hole by wearing a sweater over the shirt.
But these shirts are dying. I'm simply reanimating their corpses, out of love, appreciation, and the inability to suddenly replace 12 decent shirts on my budget.
So, what do I do? I cannot, in good faith, give these shirts to the Salvation Army. They are unfixable (many a tailor has tried, but the stitches do not last). The more I wear them, the worse they get. Is there a way to wring one more moment of value from these shirts? Do they deserve the dustbin of my history?
