You can learn a lot about New York from its clothes. The shirts made by the pizzerias and the moving companies and the utilities. The ones celebrating museums and galleries. The iconography of the city’s utility services, schools and government agencies.
Clothes like these — from long-running institutions, and long-gone ones as well — weren’t necessarily designed with fashion in mind, but they have a particular emotional resonance that’s hard to duplicate. And they are beginning to be coveted by collectors.
Earlier this month, I wrote about Fantasy Explosion, a store in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn that has made selling these sorts of T-shirts its mission. The shop’s inventory has included items from various sub-units of the police, fire and sanitation departments; street-corner shirts commemorating 9/11, the Subway Series and the 2003 blackout; shirts from local bars and restaurants from each of the past few decades.
Once the article published, readers began sending me images of the items they’ve held on to for years, shirts that held deep meaning for them and told a story about New York history.
Now the Styles desk of The New York Times would like to know: What’s in your closet or your storage space? Do you have shirts from long-shuttered nightclubs? Old uniforms from city agencies? A dad hat from the beloved neighborhood restaurant that closed last year? Pieces of clothing from your elementary school, your summer camp, your crossword-solver club?
We’d love to see them.
To contribute, please upload an image of the item below and fill out all of the required fields. We will share some of our favorites in the coming weeks.
