Want to kiss my lucky egg, mon?

Memory is a way of holding onto the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose. - Wonder Years

A woman shuffled, with her head down, by a tray of folded Kurtas. After taking a beat she stepped back and lightly ran her hand along the neckline of one of the kurtas releasing a slight, tight smile. She must have felt me staring at her, because she looked back at me and said "these remind me of my mother. I bought her one, but she passed before she was able to wear it." She quickly filed through the fanned out tops and took one to the register. As she dug out her well-swiped credit card, she kept her eyes down and said, I probably won't wear this, but now I can see my mom everyday hanging in my closet when I get ready.  


Memories are among the most bizarre human capabilities. In an unsystematic evolution they creep up, strangle you, and force you to relive the past. Sometimes you never want to leave that memory, and sometimes you feel like you are holding your breath waiting to snap back into reality. 


The smell of carbon copies instantly takes me back to my dad's office at Mercer University. Then swiftly leads me into the hallway with my brother. I watch as we push each other down the hall in cardboard boxes that we decorated pretending they were bobsleds. When we made it to the end of the hall "alive," we would turn to each other and ask, "Do you want to kiss my lucky egg, mon?" Cool Runnings was among the favorites in the Dixon household. 

Carbon copies aside, fashion secretes so many memories. Every memory I have seems to start and end in fashion. Fashion is the key that connects so many people to days, people, and places that seem so far away. 

Wedding dresses hang in closets, or lay a chest harboring the feelings and sentiments of commitment and love. Jewelry chests cradle baubles, charms, and pearls that rested on your skin as you graduated from college, got your first job, or met your future husband. Baby blankets that swaddled your newborn on his/her first day home from the hospital, rest in plastic tubs at the top of a closet.

These memories sit waiting for you to revisit them. Hoping to give you the gift of feeling. Feeling alive, feeling love, feeling hope, and even feeling sad. These memories can be whatever you need that day. Maybe you need to feel hopeful, or maybe you need to feel sad for a moment to appreciate the way things were. 

That's the beauty of fashion. As fashion cycles, so do memories. In any given season, all the sudden, runways are laden with gauze tops, bell-bottoms, crop tops, or jumpsuits that instantly transport you to way back when. These images of now current fashions give you a proverbial hug in a world that feels so unsettled and chaotic. Reminding you that the carefree feelings you had when you were young are still possible, giving you a sense of hope in a seemingly hopeless time. 





Fashion is personal. It is a memory, a sentiment, a feeling. Set it in motion.


Feel the rhythm, feel the ride, get on up, it's bobsled time.



XO, CC

In honor of memories, I wore a bib I made today.