50 Shades of Blue

           

            Like I wrote before, sometimes we need to help out with eveyrday stuff in the Company. This day we had a task to sort second-hand jeans and military jackets.

            More than 3000 short jeans arrived in packages to the Company. We had to measure them, decide upon the colours, sizes etc. The first step was to separate them by style. Levi's 501 are the most popular ones, they are sold very well, so first we had to take them out. Then we measured them and decided upon the sizes. And finally, we had about 10 different samples of blue shades, so we had to decide for each shorts to which pile they belong to. At first it seemed easy, what is there to think? But, the brightness of the denim wash was changing in front of our eyes. It is interesting how the colour of one particular shorts changes when you put it in comparison to different shades. I never thought there can be so many: light wash, light stone wash, dark wash, dark stone wash, regular wash, grey wash… After that, we had to separate the ones which were dirty, ripped too much or had extra stitches.

            With the military jackets it was a little bit easier. They were all the same pattern and style, we just had to decide upon the size and quality. What really got to me, is that some of the jackets still had a name tag with a year on it. I guess that means that some of them were really worn in a war, or at least in the army. Holding one of them in my hands, I couldn't help but wonder: who was the solider, the owner of this jacket? Was he afraid? Was he missing his family? And the most important – did he get home safe? Each jacket, each shorts belonged to someone. Each stitch has a story to tell. This one was a really good party. This sandy dirt is from that awesome day at the beach. This one was worn while a first kiss.

            My Company is selling those second-hand clothes branded as „vintage“. There is a difference between those two terms, but I don't think the buyers really think about it. While purchasing these  items, they receive a clean, depersonalised garment. They don't think about their journey.

            Then I got inspired about my research. I know exactly what I want to write about.