I have magic pants that once transformed me. For many reasons, they now haunt me

Every six months or so, I empty my wardrobe and cull anything that is unlikely to be worn again. I’ll start with the colourful items that have snuck in during a temporary attempt to wear clothes other than black and move on to the pairs of jeans with ripped seams, adding a jumper that has seen better days and a shirt that I didn’t like much even when I first brought it home from the op-shop.

Consequently, my wardrobe is endlessly rotating. Clothes come and go without much fanfare and I’m rarely sentimental about them, preferring to hoard stacks of letters and postcards steeped in history that don’t have the unfortunate tendency to go out of style or no longer fit.

The pants that were once magic.

But there is one item of clothing that has been with me since the late 1990s. Buried deep behind a cream cabled cardigan that doubles as a doona when it’s cold, this pair of woollen pants with a fine white stripe have moved from house to house, finding their way back into the wardrobe each time, despite not being worn for over 20 years. They are semi-fitted with a sailor-style buttoned front and wide legs, and the hems brush against the floor, obscuring most of a shoe. Until I started having children in 2004, I wore these pants everywhere. A uniform of sorts, I styled them with fitted shirts, leather vests, wild collars, and cropped jackets, always enjoying the sense of armour they provided.

Unlike many other things in my life, the pants were not a rash purchase. Designed in Melbourne by an independent label that no longer exists, I must have tried them on about 20 times, desperate to buy them but unable to justify the price tag. At the time I was struggling to make a living as a writer and my clothes were mainly second-hand or on long-term loan from more successful friends. But there was something about these pants that kept luring me back to the shop. And each time I buttoned them up and turned this way and that in front of the in-store mirror, I felt transformed from the twenty-something aspiring writer to a fully-fledged adult who knew things.

I finally caved in and bought the pants when I was in Sydney staying with a friend after my playwright partner banked his first real royalty cheque and we had money in the bank. Until then, we’d made-do, hustling and tending bars or working in retail. But the royalty cheque proved that earning money was possible. Even if it was fleeting and rare. And the pants reminded me of that every time I wore them. They worked hard for me, clocking up the mileage at opening nights and festivals, dinners and anything that required a dress code.

I haven’t worn the pants outside my apartment in many years. Technically, I can still squeeze into them because the fabric is forgiving and has a slight stretch, but they don’t hang correctly, they pull in the wrong places and instead of making me feel glamorous and young, they remind me of what is no more. Not in an ageing body way, but as a reminder of a time when a purchase like this was something to consider. Something that had the power to alter me; something that represented so much more than an item of clothing.

When my partner died in 2020 and took with him so many of our shared experiences as writers, the pants took on an even greater meaning. They existed at the beginning of our relationship, they were a purchase with history, with a story. I wore them with him. To his opening nights and to events that marked his life as a playwright. And now that he is gone, the pants offer a ghostly shape of that time.

I know that I should surrender them to someone else who would wear them and give them the attention they deserve. Offer them another life on another body. My daughter perhaps who has tried to steal them more than once, recognising the timelessness of their style. But I can’t quite let them go. My memories of that time are so woven into their stitching, that to release them would be to release a part of all that. I did let her borrow them once for an occasion, but as soon as she’d finished wearing them, I rescued them from her floor and hung them back in their place behind the cabled cream cardigan in the wardrobe where they feel most at home.

Nova Weetman is a writer for books, film and television based in Melbourne. Her latest book is the memoir Love, Death & Other Scenes.

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