Trying To Walk In Beauty

My sense of poverty didn’t help my love of fashion whatsoever. I wanted new clothes at the beginning of every school year, but that never happened for me. My family and I were living way below the poverty line. We were broker than broke. So when it came to keeping up with my friends’ new clothes every week, I had to put my sewing skills to use. Early on, during summer breaks, we would go to church to attend and in all honesty, we went for the food because they had some and we had none at home. We tolerated the sermon and the singing and if you asked me, the food and the snacks were well worth it. There was a time in between when they would give out crafts to work on and the young girls and women ended up with sewing projects so this was where I learned how to sew. So while my friends were home for the weekends, I stayed behind and ended sewing and creating my own clothes during this time. I would get ideas from what other girls my age wore and if I liked them, I would recreate them. I remember one time, I took aka stole one of my uncle’s white collared shirts and I snipped off the front portion of the shirt, added a charcoal colored fabric with cream colored ruffles and laces here and there and I left the back long and flowing down my backside. That was what was in back then and I remember wearing this piece of garment for days. I got so many compliments on it and was repeatedly asked where I bought it from and my only response was to walk away. I was too embarrassed to share that I had made it myself out of my pile of scraps or the fact that I had taken my uncle’s shirt without his permission, which I can say I got in trouble for with my uncle.

There was another time when I saw a light pink fringed suede jacket on a girl from a magazine and I remember thinking I could make that. I took one of my white socks, cut them into strips to make fringes, then I got a pink sweater that I hardly wore which I’m sure was from a church and I unraveled the sleeves and I inserted the socks fringes and sewed the sleeves back together. With some left-over pieces of pink fabric, I made the pockets for the front and continued to make matching elbow pads for them. Even now, after all this time, I can see it in my mind and remember how gorgeous it looked. I loved how the fringes fell and swayed back and forth as if magically floating around when I moved my arms around. I loved wearing it so much but the only time I wore it was when I was going to bed because I was too embarrassed to say what it was made of or that I couldn’t afford a real one. I was so proud of my creation yet ashamed of how poor I really was. I couldn’t bring myself to wear out in public. I wore it in the secrecy of my own room at night. For the girls who have seen it, thank you for not realizing that I had no money.