does it feel a little creepy wearing a dead person's clothing?

[Miss Neecerie]

lol I'm the girl who saved money by eating all the expired food in the cabinet when I was told I was ineligible for food stamps last year after my dad died. Also ate (alive) hubby's old MREs. Now that's desperate. lol

Hey....I ate an MRE the other day....MojaveJack gave us some when we all went camping...and I was feeling poorly...and it was food in the house....

wasnt too bad....the protein bar thingy was actually good...

 

[BegintheBeguine]

Hubby hogged all the protein bars for himself

True, not bad. Food in the house is always a good thing. I still have one left: a vegetarian one. Considering what the meat might have been, it may not be too bad... Well, maybe next week, I still have some diabetic marmalade left.

 

[Brooksie]

Wearing dead peoples clothing does not bother me either, I have been going to garage sales, thrift stores and estate sales ever since I was just a baby so to be honest with you I had know idea which clothes dead people had owned or which were cast offs from the living.[huh]

LB

 

[happyfilmluvguy]

What makes me gag is some of the prices that people stick on those dead person's clothes.

$300 for what!?

 

[CharlieH.]

It doesn't bother me one bit, however....

When I discussed the possibility of getting a vintage suit with mother, she disgustedly replied "No son of mine's wearing some dead guy's clothes! How do you know the previous owner wasn't a leper or some sicko??".

You can imagine her disgust when I finally bought my first vintage items... she'd wail "Gad knows how many drunk nights that tie hasn't been through..."

 

[Benny Holiday]

Only rarely have I wondered about the clothing's previous owners, and even then I've thought that they must have been a classy, sharp-dressed fellow (much like me lol ). What I feel more is a connection to an era, to a time of - well - classic style! I think probably because my Dad was a young man in the 1940s, I feel comfortable with sharing that generation's style and even actual clothing.

What did amaze me one day was, after buying a suit from Ebay, that I had an American suit as opposed to an Australian suit from that era. It didn't bother me, of course, but I thought it a curious fact that the suit had come so far in both time and distance.

 

[Nashoba]

Hey....I ate an MRE the other day....MojaveJack gave us some when we all went camping...and I was feeling poorly...and it was food in the house....

wasnt too bad....the protein bar thingy was actually good...

Ugh, my husband brings them home by the case from training. They've become our emergency food storage because as Begin said, when you're desperate....and he eats all the decent stuff out of them too. I have a box of just MRE parts...the castoffs after he's eaten all the 'good stuff'

 

[Dinerman]

I have no problems with wearing dead man clothes. They're just clothes, it's not like I'm wearing their skin or anything.

I've been asked by my friends, "How many people had to die for what you're wearing today?"

 

[LizzieMaine]

Of course, when you get right down to it, none of us ever really own anything, not really -- at the most, we get to use it for a little while and then it moves on to someone else.

 

[Phil]

I've had the feeling before with the manequins. It's creepy. There was a CSI exhibit at a museum I went to. They had the clothes people were murdered in on some manequins to show how they were killed with bullet trajectory and all. It was creepy, like seeing someone getting killed before your eyes.

 

[DominusTecum]

The only thing that really worries me about thrift store finds is not "a dead person wore this," but "was that person unwashed, slovenly, and destructive to his clothing?" I console myself, if necessary, with the thought that I am not buying blue collar work attire, or clothing that is falling apart. Rather, I'm buying what was then expensive stuff, and the former owner had just as much interest in keeping it clean and nice as I do, perhaps more, because people valued their things more and tended to take better care of them in those days, I think. The tuxedo that's now mine was doubtless kept scrupulously clean, and spent years hanging in a man's closet with very little use. Therefore, relatively speaking, it's practically brand new, even if it might well be 80 years old.

 

[Mr. Rover]

what if wearing a dead man's / woman's clothing caused you to behave like the person that originally owned it? like what if their spirit possesed the new owner that wore their clothing? that would really be scary lol

Not if you're wearing Cary Grant's old clothing...

 

[green papaya]

Not if you're wearing Cary Grant's old clothing...

what if the suit belonged to ROCK HUDSON ?lol

 

[Miss Neecerie]

what if the suit belonged to ROCK HUDSON ?lol

Then it might not be -quite- the same as...

Unless you were wearing Gable's pants. Then you'd get the babes. lol

 

[HungaryTom]

Uniforms vs clothing

that creeps me out too!! i know it's been 60 years, but it still gives me the chills seeing any "Axis" stuff from WWII.

It should be made a difference between uniforms (those are also symbols) of totalitarian regimes and systems and the vintage clothing of civilians.

The Uniforms symbolize the system and that is what they were/are standing for. Wearing them is an ideological statement.

Since all totalitarian systems use(d) 'politically -ideologically' selected troops - those uniforms with the runes or with the leather greatcoats etc. are the quintessence of it all.

Since they were used in wars and against civilian population and the number of their victims goes in the tens of millions - to wear them is a strange statement. Even if many of the wearers brought ultimate sacrifice for the ideology they believed in.

Those uniforms belong to the history museums - not in the wardrobes or among costumes to be worn at masquerades.

Re-enacting and Militaria? I could imagine that in the uniform and at the unit I served my conscript service: 32th Budapest Guards Rgt. est. 1741. I have anyway the badge of that unit.


Also the wearing of vintage medals is weird to me that the actual guy has never merited -just purchased.

Civilian clothing: if you like vintage, buy&wear them.

Clothing of executed or murdered civilians????

Just my opinions.

Regards:

Tom

 

[Dread Scott]

I've worn vintage for a long time, and never been creeped out a bit. I wear some of the things I've inherited from my grandfathers and father, all passed on, and like the feeling of connection it gives me to them.

Now, then... I also have a box of things - clothes included - that was once "case evidence" from the early 1960's, evidence tags still attached. Some have suspicious brown-red stains on them... those I will never wear, and do creep me a bit when I go through them.

They were rescued from a courthouse purge, by an avid antique-collecting friend who worked in the local pokey... it creeped him out, so he passed them on. I don't know what I'll eventually do with them.

So, I guess creepiness depends on my associations with the items.

 

[happyfilmluvguy]

what if the suit belonged to ROCK HUDSON ?lol

Unless you were wearing Gable's pants. Then you'd get the babes. lol

Hmm...I see a suit combination...

"Put on THESE PANTS, and THIS COAT, and you can be....Rock Gable! uh...Clark Hudson!"

Add one of Bogart's ties and William Powell's hats, and you'll be the ultimate leading man.

Whoops, don't forget James Cagney's shoes and socks. You gotta be able to out run the cops.

 

[Miss Sis]

I don't usually give much more than a passing thought to where these clothes were before they came to me, just how I'm going to clean them and do they fit me nicely/suit me?

I have a dress that was my grandmother's that I sometimes wonder where she wore it but unless I knew who it had belonged to or have a photo of them wearing it, I'm not that bothered.

 

[matei]

... and may have even been wearing those same clothing when they died.

It depends on how they died...

 

[Edward]

what if wearing a dead man's / woman's clothing caused you to behave like the person that originally owned it? like what if their spirit possesed the new owner that wore their clothing? that would really be scary lol

I'm sure there was a short story about this once.... was it a Twilight Zone? An Outer Limits? Noir set, I think, about shoes that had belonged to a murderer...

There are documented cases of the recipients of organ donations developing new tastes they didn't have before - one woman who received a heart and lungs in the uK, maybe 20 years ago, suddenyl had cravings for beer and curry, two things she'd never liked - but it turned out on investigation the young man whose organs she received was big on them.

I was at a goodwill once with my mom and came across a child's clown costume that looked eerily familiar to me. I pulled it off the rack and went over to my mom and said ma, does this look familiar? We both started to look at the seaming and recognized it as her work. It was a costume she'd made for me when I was a kid. Whoever we'd given it to when I outgrew it must have donated it. I was tempted to buy it back for nostalgia reasons...but my mom told me I was being silly and I didn't. Now I wish I had.

I'd probably have bought it. There's a few things that I had when I was much younger that I kinda wish I still did, especially the sledge Dad built. Also some toys that my parents bought (I still have a lot of my childhood toys, which I'm thankful for) - it's only really in the last few years (I'm now as near 33 as makes no damn difference) that I've come to appreciate how tight my parents had it at times and how much they gave up themselves to be able to afford to do for us what they did. They're both still around, but I know they won't last forever.

I have no problems with wearing dead man clothes. They're just clothes, it's not like I'm wearing their skin or anything.

I've been asked by my friends, "How many people had to die for what you're wearing today?"

lol

Reminds me of that line from Hedwig and the Angry Inch:

""What poor unfortunate creature had to die for you to wear that [fur coat]?" She asked. "My Aunt Trudy," I replied."

lol

What did amaze me one day was, after buying a suit from Ebay, that I had an American suit as opposed to an Australian suit from that era. It didn't bother me, of course, but I thought it a curious fact that the suit had come so far in both time and distance.

Amazing how things have changed in a few generations, isn't it? I suspect that the clothes I have on today probably represent at least four different continents.... My grandparents never left the UK... my last living grandparent, my maternal grandmother - she spent quite a lot of time in London just after the war (her brother worked in the offices of a construction copmany, and like many such Irish companies, they moved wholesale to London for a few years post 1945 for the lucrative work in reconstructing the city post war), which was just unbelievably exotic for a person of her generation. My parents were married before they flew.... Now, by the age of 33, I've travelled and worked in three continents, communicate regularly with friends across the globe, and am even part of several communities like rthis one where I regularly interact with folks on the other side of the world whom I've never even met. It really is incredible how things have changed in such a short space of time.

It would only creep me out if I knew the person was an evil wretch in life, like Al Capone maybe,...otherwise it wouldn't bother me.

Yes, I would get the creeps of that. I would get the creeps big time in certain locations and off certain things (one particular suit of armour in a museum on Poland - just that one - gavce me such nasty vibes...). As a general rule fine, but....

would you wear a wool great coat that was originally worn by one of the Nazi guards in the Auschwitz death camp?

When I was 15, I wore a Swastika a lot. I was never racist or anti-semitic with it (hell, I grew up in small town Ireland - I think til the age of 16 I'd met precisely one black person, and I'd never met a practicing Jew until i was in my 20s), if I'm being honest it was a lot more to do with the predominance of that symbol in the London punk scene of the late 70s. I discovered the Sex Pistols in 1989 - my first retro trip! I couldn't now. A couple of New Year's Eves age we had a 2005 themed party (05 into 06) - I went as Prince Harry dressed as a Nazi. It felt odd wearing a swastika for that. I love fascist-chic still, but I certainly wouldn't be able to wear an original uniform, or even the insignia (unless maybe it was repro for re-enactment. and sometimes I think those neoNazi kids who idolise Hitler should be sent to a form of a boot camp where they are treated (within reason, obviously) to life as in a concentration camp with guards in full regalia.... anyhow....). I did visit Auschwitz back in 2000 when I was backpacking in Poland. I've never been as creeped out by a palce anywhere. Ther'es parts of that place, especially the Auschqitz II - Birkenau end, which have such a lurking sense of all-pervading evil even now.... Birkenau is thed bit where the extermination chambers were - if you've seen Schindler, that's the big gated bit where the train pulled in.... it has been left untouched, exactly as was (the museum is all in the other bit of the camp) so you can get a feel of what life was like in there. Hideous. Stepped into one of those little huts and nearly keeled over. It's worth seeing as an educational experience, but you'd have to be utterly heartless not to be freaked out by it all.

As to wearing general vintage, I'm fine.... I have a whole bunch of stuff I wear a lot and never give a second thought. All my tailcoats (including two that I butchered for Rocky Horror costumes - but to be fair they were so far gone that was all they were fit for) were vintage - current one is a beautiful, spotless 30s piece have been vintage; for years I've bought jackets and things in charity shops, so I'm quite sure that a lot of that is stuff that belonged to dead folks. I know when I go I'd like to think my stuff gets used and passed on, not left to rot or gather dust. I do have one pair of shoes which belonged to my paternal grandfather - he died in June 1980, at 64. They are russet brown (about band on the same as a WW2 US service shoe in colour), not unlike Oxfords but no toe cap. He bought them in I think the 70s and then never wore them because he thought they were maybe a bit too "modern". I wear them occasionally now. He died when I was 5, and I have a lot of memories of him (little brother was only just three, and doesn't have any recollection)... I know he'd be proud as all hell of what I've done since and he'd be gobsmacked at the idea that I'm living in London, own my own property, and working at a University, wearing his shoes.