Clothing can trigger many memories of stories in your life. A wedding dress or prom dress of course will have special memories associated with it. You may have inherited clothing from a family member. Clothing styles cycle in and out of fashion so older clothing may come back into style.
Clothing can bring up memories of events that the clothing was worn for. Obviously, a wedding dress will bring back memories of the wedding day. There may be a story behind the dress. Maybe it was your mother's wedding dress. Maybe it was given to you. Maybe a family member or a friend sewed the wedding dress for you. When you see the dress or a photo of the dress you will probably have memories come back to you of that special day and how you got the dress.
My mother sewed most of my clothing while I was growing up. When I was in third grade, my school teacher gave me a couple of store-bought dresses that her daughters had outgrown. I thought that was pretty neat. Now I realize that because she worked, she was not able to sew clothing for her family. I feel I was pretty lucky to have my mother sewing clothes for me.
Are you having a family reunion? A special custom T-shirt or hat could be a memorable keepsake from your reunion. You could get a T-shirt with the family name and the year of the reunion. You could feature family photos in the design. Having matching T-shirts would make it easy to recognize members of the family. With a large family reunion, each branch of the family could have a different color of T-shirt or hat. Then it would be easy to identify who belongs to each branch. My father's brothers and sisters have been holding reunions for over 50 years. With children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren there are a lot of family members. Knowing who belongs to which branch of the family could be a very useful thing.
Clothing is a big part of our lives. We use it every day. We wash our clothes and hang them up or put them away on shelves or in drawers. We choose our clothes because of the way they look and feel. The colors we wear and the styles and types of clothing we choose are ways of expressing ourselves.
The fashion of clothing or the types of clothing can give clues to who the people are in photos we have if we don't know who they are already. You may be able to identify the year by the style of the clothing. You may be able to identify the region or country by the type of clothing. You might be able to identify a person's occupation by what they are wearing.
Clothes will help you with memories from your life when you write your story. If you are writing the story of a family member, the clothes will give you clues about their life. Use clothing to help you in writing family stories.
