How this all started

A paper thin cashmere tee, a Neapolitan mother-in-law and the long way round to a closet that works.

Words and photographs by Heather · 2 minute read

It turned a little crisp in Rome this week, the kind of morning where you open the window and decide on the spot that it's time to go up into the attic. Here we call it the cambio di stagione, the change of seasons, when the linen goes up and the wools and cashmeres come down, and every year I get as giddy about it as a kid on the first day of school.

The first thing I reach for is always a paper thin cashmere long sleeve tee, the kind most lingerie shops in Italy sell for layering, and when I pulled it over my head this time I started thinking about how differently I get dressed now compared to the woman I used to be, and the girl before her.

That girl didn't have a lot. Most of what I wore growing up came from thrift stores or was handed down from other families, and sometimes people who didn't even know us left bags of clothes at the door because they knew we needed them. I'm still not sure if it was imagination or plain stubbornness about how I wanted to show up in the world, but I always managed to put something cute together out of whatever was in those bags.

“A piece of clothing carries a little of whoever wore it before, and then turns into something new on you.”

Looking back, that's probably where all of this started for me.

The woman came later, in Manhattan, with a corporate job and a very different income, and she went in the opposite direction. For a stretch there I wore a different outfit to work every single day, and I don't think anyone at the office ever saw me in the same thing twice. I'd love to tell you I wore it all more than once, but when I look back at what I spent on clothes... wow.

My saving grace was my niece, who has her own stylish streak and was grateful for anything I passed along, so every trip home to Nashville I packed suitcases full of clothes for her. She still has some of those pieces all these years later, and I wouldn't be surprised if they end up with my great niece one day.

The funny part is that I had a million things to wear back then and still stood in front of my closet saying I had nothing, because I didn't know how to wear what I owned and nothing I bought ever talked to anything else in there.