Do I need another striped shirt? No. Am I obsessed with them? Well…
It’s hard not to pick up the classic Reminiscence striped boat neck on a thick wire hanger and not be right back in high school. One of my go-to outfits at the time was this top with three quarter sleeves, a black skirt -- not quite a circle but 50s full and just at the knee -- and black flats. Good times…
But were they? High school is full of challenges that I don’t need to mention. We all know what they were. And yet, when I pick up that shirt, with its handwritten price tag, something comes over me.
Could it be the colors? Absolutely. Nothing at Reminiscence was classic, everything had its own edge. When I think of striped shirts, I think of navy and white, or white and navy – I have both those, of course – but at Reminiscence they would be purple and lilac, or teal and pale blue.
Is it the atmosphere? Certainly. Vintage stores were my safe haven in high school. Something about the patterns, the furniture, which were reminiscent of my other obsession— black-and-white films. There was a fabulous vintage store – now a laundry, on 84th Street, between Second and Third. You walked downstairs and felt like you were in someone’s 1940s basement apartment. One of my favorite Yorkville novels, Frank Conroy’s Body and Soul, was set in this era, and could have taken place there.
Or is it something else? Before they tore down the Brooklyn Heights branch of the public library, I was doing a research project that required a 1970s Manhattan telephone directory. When I opened the volume — the actual volume, mind you, not microfiche — there they were. All my childhood haunts. Eclair Pastry, Melnikoff’s, and Gee, The Kids Need Clothes. The small businesses of 1970s Manhattan. I was stricken. I could not move. It was as if I was transported back in time to Yorkville and I was looking at the White Pages at our dining room table. There my parents both were, alive, healthy, and doing their thing. Alla was knitting, and Daniel was doing what Daniel always did — listening to classical music on WQXR.
And there it is...the super power of the vintage striped shirt.