It was a suburban Missouri dry cleaner that processed 125 items from my mother’s wardrobe after she died. Dresses were $5, but if you brought in a large amount they’d do two for the price of one. And on Tuesdays pants were a dollar. With all the coupons added in, the bill was $375 cash. Aside from her books, which I couldn’t bear to sort through, her clothes told the story of her many lives: a dancer, a world traveler, a single mother, a college professor.
Being her only child, I inherited (or perhaps, assumed) all of her belongings. Unlike me, who regularly purges or passes along clothes, my mother threw nothing away. So in March of 2018, eight months after she died, I flew home to St. Louis to sort through the 56 years of life she left behind.
Daniela Spector
I was 23 and had just finished my first year working in magazines in New York. In between calls and after my New York colleagues signed off for the day, I sat in the basement of my grandmother’s ranch style home where my mother and I had lived for nearly a decade, opening bags and boxes and drawers trying to find meaning in things whose owner was gone.
My mother’s sartorial eras were well photographed. In the ’70s she changed from a Catholic school uniform into leotards, and eventually hand-sewn can-can costumes. At 16, she danced with Mikhail Baryshnikov when he performed with the Louisville Ballet. She spent her mid- to late-20s in khaki shorts and linen button-downs, living in southeast Asia for a Berkeley masters program.
In Los Angeles, where I spent the first 12 years of my life—she wore Nanette Lapore from the thrift store, small heels that showed her dancers’ calves, shrunken cardigans, and leather bags. Her collection of little Betsy Johnson tops and mid-length skirts was unparalleled, and she was not afraid of patterns. As she grayed, her final era was that of a college professor:well-fitting denim, thrifted Ferragamo loafers from Out of the Closet in L.A.’s Atwater Village, a dark cornflower blue Coach bag, a white or light pastel button down and a blazer (preferably in wool because her circulation was bad).
During this time, my mother and I shared a large armoire and a linen hall closet; I remember the stacks of her jeans and button ups in neat little piles behind the French doors. Her clothes were almost formulaic, and my memories of her pulling the top of each stack down are vibrant in my brain.