Growing up we had a dress-up box, a cardboard receptacle of our parents' (and, in some cases, grandparents' and great-grandparents') clothes. These clothes came in handy when we were putting on plays or preparing Halloween costumes. Also when we declared a neighborhood Opposite Day and made all the boys dress up like girls.

And, of course, the time we dressed-up as bums so as to look 'less conspicuous' during a short field trip down the alley to root through people's trash cans. Quite a rewarding field trip, as we found several discarded shower rings to use as bracelets and a FORD sign that was fun to put in a treasure box.

My favorite item out of the whole box was an old cotton shirt of my dad's. It was made of a superior blend of fabric, smooth and soft, and when belted firmly around the waist it made an excellent Jedi tunic.

Its only fault was that the older and more worn it got, the longer the rip from its collar down its front became. As my sewing skills improved with age, I decided to mend the shirt and extend its lifetime a little longer. It was one of my favorite things to wear by this point, mostly as a sleepshirt.

So I sewed the torn bit with white thread, and then touched up the tiny blue triangle that adorned the part of the collar that went over the hollow of one's throat. Then I decided that as long as I had my sewing box out, I should go ahead and fancy this shirt up as much as possible, to show it how much I loved it.

So I embroidered a little orange and turquoise pattern around the collar, if by 'embroider' you mean 'made little scalloped stitches'.

The reason I mention any of this is because the other day I got an Bloomingdale's ad in the mail, and there on the cover of the supplement, hanging off the rail-thin limbs of a model, was a shirt that in essence was twinkies with mine, little stitched embellishments and all.

So, much to my shock, me = fashion-forward. By like seventeen years, but still.