I do not know about you, but I have this strange habit of sniffing worn clothes before sliding them into the inner drum of the washing machine. Not the wet sweaty ones; only the ones that have stayed put in the laundry basket, quietly, without raising hell in the olfaction department.
There is something about smelling used clothes. Subdued musty odours of dried sweat beads tend to awaken memories; memories of plodding along an illusory road that brews, even sires, those distinct scents. It speaks of the wearer’s day in the office, in the car park, in the smoking room, in the coffee shop, the evening walk… It briefly captures life, holding it within the seams of the memory scarf; nary a thought for the lack of captured photographs to return back to.
The seams of shirts/tees/blouses/dresses: they are the story tellers. They hold on to the residue of life that exhales fluids. They whisper short stories, almost fairy-tale like, but without the overused once-upon-a-time beginning. They simply lead the sniffer by the nose to the kitchen, the office, the outdoors…telling stories of curries cooked and taste-tested on the palm before wiping it down the shirt/dress/blouse/skirt; of brisk walking sessions; of fresh green scent of grass lingering on the seat; of perfumes and deodorants on their last rites; and other unprintable stories.
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White clothes are big telltales. Even before the olfaction hits the memory button, they provoke you to feel the day through the fabric. As if the end of the day gave it respite to reminisce all that transpired from the time it touched the body to the time it was unbuttoned/removed and dumped in the laundry basket.
Monochrome clothes are poker faces of the fabric world. They wait for the nostril to touch their inner seams and provoke the day out.
Bright colours are the go-getters. They manifest vibrancy everywhere they float, drawing in smells from the ground and the sky to web together a collage of whiffs that speak of everything but the day that it saw.
It is the black that is seemingly weary of all things sensorial. It traps smells on the outside – on every weft and woof of the material. It demands a cheek touch to whisper the truancies it indulged in to subtly reveal all that it caught during its long day/night out.
The night clothes…?
I will leave that for another day!
