Alterations

It’s hard to find a cute bag that you can bike with. One that can hold the innumerable items that you require for your day, stay on while you ride, plus an accessible pocket for you bike lock (the frame attachment for my kryptonite lock remains on a Schwinn that was stolen from me years ago, goddammit). You need a bag that can still look reasonable when you go into a bar and have to stand without access to below-bar hooks. Or not take up a ton of space when you’re squeezed into that middle two-top on a date. One that can fit neatly under your seat at an off-off-off show down-down-downtown where your knees are already up against the back of someone else’s seat (OK, let’s admit it, you’re still in a bar, they’re just doing theater there that night).

But I found one! It’s perfect. It’s this weird faded black leather that still goes with gray or brown. The strap has a zipper down the middle so it can be worn across the shoulder, or as a backpack, or as a more traditional purse. The main pocket has zippers on either side, plus two smaller pockets, and then a large pocket on the back that is perfect to slide my lock into. I can fit my wallet, my makeup bag, the other little bag that I use for lipstick/makeup removing wipes/jewelry, my pencil case, my notebook, plus maybe a dress and some bike shorts, my bike lights, and my keys!

I got it for $15 at pretty good vintage store. When I bought it, one of the hooks that clipped a strap to a metal fastening was not entirely functional, but I quickly repaired that with a small key ring from the hardware store. It doesn’t even look weird.

So my bag and I biked, dined, and drank in perfect harmony for several months. I realized that the interior cavity was not actually separated from the two smaller pockets inside (which were also not separated from each other), but I turned the whole thing inside out and stitched that right up. My attempts at organization would not be thwarted!

Unfortunately I think maybe the makeup bag, other bag that I use for my lipstick/makeup removing wipes/jewelry, pencil case, notebook, dress, shorts, bike lights, and keys were maybe a little too much for the little bag. I mean, they all fit in there, no problem, but if I happened to carelessly put a too-bulky lip balm in the front pocket, the zipper would split open. Same for the secondary pocket. I could get the zipper back together after much back-and-forthing, but the fact is, without a more robust closure, this bag was just not going to hold what I wanted it to.

I had even made the mistake of putting a few items into one of the smaller pockets willy-nilly, i.e. not just putting them into one of my other little bags that I keep in my bag. Sure enough I got to work, the exterior zipper had split, and my favorite necklace was nowhere to be found. Catastrophe.

But I loved the bag! So I decided to see what could be done. I took it to a shoe/bag/leather repair guy. I asked him to please replace the zippers, repair the strap that was threatening to break (probably because of the weight of my bike lock…), and to also please sew up the interior pocket that I had neglected.

He looked over the bag. Turned it inside out. Looked at my seam work on the other two pockets. Said I had done a pretty god job. Checked out the zippers. Said no problem, $65. I said what if we leave off the interior seam? He said sure, no problem, you can take care of that yourself. $50.

I know this seems like a lot for repairs— $50 to replace two zippers and repair one strap.

But honestly, this bag had already proved itself as ideal. It was just a little wanting in the mechanics department. And I’d only paid $15 for it in the first place—for a leather, lined bag. So is $65 worth the bag that you really want, that you already know perfectly suits your lifestyle?

I said yes.

A few weeks later, boyfriend and I had a wedding on the books. It was going to be a bunch of his old friends. Some I’d met, some I hadn’t, but I wanted to make a good impression. Plus my wedding-attending days are just beginning, so each one is basically a very exciting chance for me to get dressed up (read: play grown-up).

It was going to be a pretty casual wedding, from what I understood. Additionally, I was going to be arriving directly from a trip to France. So if whatever I wore to the wedding were be something I could already justify having in my suitcase because I would wear it elsewhere on my trip… well, that would just be awesome. I was imagining a glorified sundress.

So the search began. I tried to borrow things from friends… there were options, but nothing quite right. Many sundresses felt too flimsy, many things that were too formal felt… well, too formal. Finally three days before I was set to leave for my trip I stopped into a vintage store across from where I do my laundry.

I’ve gotten some other great things from this store—the woman who runs it does an amazing job with selecting what she puts on her racks, I’m pretty sure she hand repairs everything herself. When something has a tag that says “as is”, usually I won’t even notice the issue, and she’ll just say “Oh yeah, there’s this stain here that I couldn’t get out all way…”. She knows. Because she handles every single piece herself.

So I tried on a dress at her shop because it was this amazing print—floral, I love boldly colored florals, this one was almost fauve-esque— and sort of water-color in style. I of course got the zipper stuck part way up because obviously I don’t have a way with delicate zippers, and rather than make it worse I figured I’d just come out of the dressing room and have her fix it.

She got the zipper unstuck—“Don’t worry, I’m pretty good with these things”—and then immediately said “That would be great on you, you’d have to get it altered.”

This woman didn’t try to sell me on anything, she acknowledged right away that the dress would need some work if it was going to “work” for me. And I loved that. She recognized a fixer-upper. She proceeded to show me how, because it’s a well-made dress from the sixties, there were several seams that could be taken in in order to achieve a precise fit. Fortunately the dress was too big, so we had material to work with.

I brought it to a tailor closer to my apartment who had done another (much simpler) job for me on short notice a few months prior. I showed him all the seams I wanted to have taken in, and eventually decided to have the whole thing made a little shorter as well.

I wore the dress out to drinks and dinner in France. Annika! Where did you get that dress?

At the wedding, Boyfriend’s very style-conscious friend told me that it was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen, and that it looked like it was made for me. “Well, I had it altered,” I said. “Ah, you had it joojed,” she said. “Very good.”

Sometimes, the perfect thing isn’t perfect when we meet it. I’m not saying that every challenging item is worth our investment and sacrifice, but not everything worth caring about is going to be ideal on first sight.

That’s not to say that our vision for something, or rather, the alterations that we would prescribe, are correct. It has to be a balance, honoring the original integrity of the piece. I mean, that’s why you liked it in the first place.

But sometimes it’s worth the time. Not just throwing out those pants because you’ve stepped on the hem too many times or worn a hole in the crotch. Not saying no to a second date just because he wore ugly shoes the first time you went out. Not deleting the entire draft of the play you’ve been writing for months because you can’t fix that one scene in the third act.

I guess the point is, if you really care about something, it probably merits some effort. And if “growing up” means thinking about things like… you know, the future, then maybe it’s time to acknowledge that some things are worth keeping around.