Do you know, I have an amazing t-shirt that I have now had for nearly 20 years and won’t wear out? I guess I’m lucky that I haven’t changed size much over the 20 years too, so I can still wear it but its one of those wonder items that you own that just refuses to wear out. Now normally it’s the things you really, really hate that refuse to wear out. Those things that are foul but are too good to throw away and you keep them in your wardrobe even though you loathe them - but this isn’t one of them at all. In fact, I have a theory about the non-wearoutable loathsome clothes. I reckon you take them out the wardrobe, put them on, look in the mirror and go “yeuch, I hate this”, so you take it off and put it back in the wardrobe – that’s why they won’t wear out – you never actually wear them for more than 3 minutes at a time! They do say (whoever they are) that if you haven’t worn something for 2 years and have nowhere to wear it booked for the next 6 months, then you should get rid of it. It’s a great theory, but in my experience the day after you throw out the ‘useful’ box that you’ve had for 2 years and never used, is the day that you need to post a china teapot to Aunty Anne in Japan and you’ll need a box of just that size and shape! The same principle probably applies to clothes but I seriously can’t think of any occasion for me to wear that pink shiny eighties style blouse with the puff sleeves any time soon…
Anyway, back to the t-shirt…It’s a great shirt and I love it. It’s black – in fact, it’s very black, and every time I wash it, more black comes out. It’s the kind of item that if it was red, would turn all your underwear pink (which you can of course live with) but since its black, it just turns everything a dirty grey colour.
So, for 20 years I have washed it regularly and more black dye washes out every time but the t-shirt itself has never apparently lost any colour. 20 years of washes and it hasn’t turned grey with losing all that dye every wash. 20 years, hundreds of washes, spin cycles and dripping black dye all over the lawn and it is still reassuringly, well, black. It’s both amazing and a little unsettling and slightly unnerving. Where is all the black coming from, why isn’t it a dish rag by now?
I wonder if the answer is in the design, as this is my Dark Side of the Moon t-shirt that I am talking about…*1
*1...and if you were really interested in that link, you should try this.
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