Nobody warned me that, in my early 20s, the most relevant wardrobe in my life wouldn’t be my own—it would be my mom’s.
I probably should have seen this coming. When I was in third grade, I remember my mom picking up a pair of Birkenstocks at Scheels and telling me that one day I would be wearing them. I thought they were hideous. Even if she was right, I had decided I would never give her the satisfaction of admitting it. Yet by sixth grade, I was asking for my second pair of Birks for my 12th birthday. For a while, I was convinced she owned a crystal ball. Now, I’ve started treating her closet like a local swap and shop, complete with Banana Republic jackets she refuses to part with because “they will come back in style.” For years—and she’ll tell you this, too—I rolled my eyes. Now, I go home and leave with a pile of clothes over my arm and the uncomfortable realization that my mom might have been right all along.
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The first things I started stealing were her blazers. Not the soft, oversized kind Hailey Bieber has been photographed in, but structured ones with real shoulders. The ones that have been shoved to the back of closets since the early 2000s. Strong tailoring is everywhere again. Throw a blazer over a fitted white T-shirt and relaxed denim, or pair it with a longer skirt and simple heel. Same blazer, different decade.
Then, there are the pieces my mom simply refused to get rid of. There is always one coat—the long, structured wool one that felt like an investment. Hers has survived years of Minnesota winters and more than a few closet cleanouts. Long wool coats are back, but I’m not sure they ever really left Minnesota. Wear it over jeans and a sweater and pair with sneakers.
Tweed was where I started questioning my own taste. I used to look at my mom’s tweed jackets and see office clothes. Now, I see them everywhere, styled with denim, loafers, and basic knits. The difference isn’t the jacket. It’s everything around it. Skip the matching skirt and, instead, wear the blazer with a crisp T-shirt and dark-wash jeans. Apparently, I’ve reached the age where I’m giving my mom’s “old” work clothes a second life on a Saturday night.
Velvet was an even harder sell. The rich fabrics once reserved for holiday parties are showing up again. The modern version is less “watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade at your in-laws” and more “dinner in Minneapolis’ North Loop.” Try a velvet jacket with a dark tank top and black satin trousers.
With vintage pieces in hand, now I need to style them. Naturally, I went digging through a box of old belts wedged in the back of my mom’s closet (a box I knew exactly where to find after years of snooping for Christmas presents as a kid). Fastened loosely at the waist, a classic leather belt with a simple gold buckle gives her oversized wool coat a completely different shape. Her knee-high leather boots have something my new boots don’t: proof they can survive a Minnesota February. The folded, oversized plaid wool scarf collecting dust? I’m already planning to take it before she realizes houndstooth and plaid are hot right now.
This is the part nobody tells you about trends. By the time something comes back, it rarely looks exactly the way it did the first time. The blazer is the same; the jeans are different. The tweed is the same; the styling changes. The belt never went anywhere. We just stopped reaching for it.
My mom has spent years telling me not to get rid of good clothes just because I’m tired of them. I assumed this was the same logic behind keeping a leopard-print Banana Republic top because, according to her, leopard is a neutral. (She’s not wrong.) Maybe fashion doesn’t come back around—it just waits patiently in your closet.
