Patrick Refashion
Pattern: None - refashioned men’s oxford from Bonobos
Fabric: Cotton
Refashioned: Summer 2019
My friend Patrick and I have been working together for five years. I love how he dresses – on any given day he will show up in pineapples, birds, flowers, or stripes, and his shoes always pick up one or more colors from his outfit. He had one particular shirt that I had admired as long as we’ve known each other – a short sleeved button-up that is a variation on CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black) – the four colors that allow you to print in all the colors of the rainbow. My background is in graphic design, so I think it’s pretty common among our kind to feel an affinity for those four letters/colors in combination, and all the possibilities they represent!
Patrick’s shirt was a subtle take – gray instead of black, gold instead of yellow, two different shades of blue instead of cyan, and a pale red instead of magenta. I just loved it! Every time he wore it I told him so.
At the office recently, he said in casual conversation, “So, I’m thinking of giving away that shirt you like.” (Long pause)
He and I have talked about my sewing, and I had a hopeful hunch about what that might be code for. “Does this mean I can have it and alter it to fit me??” I asked him. The answer was yes. We both decided it wasn’t weird to accept a hand-me-down from your coworker, and the next day he brought it in. It was still in great shape, but had shrunk ever so gradually over its lifetime and was now feeling too short on him.
All I ever want in a top is a big sleeve, and the nice thing about starting with a men’s shirt is that there is already more room built in. So for this refashion, I left the sleeve as is, and simply cropped several stripe units off the body. The shirt then hung slightly too wide, so I added two darts each to the front and back to pull in the waist. After a couple wears, I also decided to undo the sleeve hem to let out an inch of extra length and a bonus red stripe. There’s still a pretty serious creaseline from the original hem but I’m hopeful it will even out with time.
I was desperate to wear it right away (this is a thing, I think, wanting to wear a garment the second it’s done! This impulse led me to wear an oversized sweatshirt out to a nice restaurant recently that very much confused the person I was on a date with...), but Mondays are work-from-home days so I made myself wait an extra day until I knew Patrick would be in the office. I think he liked it! This snapchat photo he sent to some former coworkers made me happy:
I asked him for some photos of this shirt’s “Before,” and he sent me a medley of them, sharing that this shirt has been to Hearst Castle, the Griffith Observatory, and Hawaii!
The shirt’s original iteration – at Hearst Castle six years ago! Photo by Patrick’s lovely and equally inspiringly-dressed wife Kendra.
So far my refashioned version has only hung out in the DC area, but Patrick’s way of describing the shirt’s travels made me want to take it somewhere new sometime soon. I have never thought of a garment as having metaphorical passport stamps, but now I will never forget that image. Thanks for handing down your special shirt, Patrick!!
~ Photos by Lizzie Epstein - thank you sister!
Drawing process reel: closet floor photo, pencil sketch, digital drawing.
