Weskit Redux

I've been wearing the old weskit more and more lately as the autumn kicks in yet again. I re-read the scribble I wrote about it a couple of years ago, and I've been reflecting on the remarkable fact that this old thing is the thick end of one hundred years old. I bought it from a church jumble sale over fifty years ago and wore it then with the irony of youth, and now I wear it earnestly and honestly as an old man. What is truly remarkable about the garment is the almost complete lack of wear to the material itself, or the stitching on the buttonholes, despite its age and the amount of use I personally have made of it over the last half century, let alone that of its previous owner(s) over the preceding fifty years or so. I think that by now, the old thing has more than repaid its carbon and water debt several thousand times over. There's also no doubt that quality such as this is pretty much impossible to find these days, outside of the most rarified of bespoke clothiers. As it did when I was an art student, it now also serves as a smoking jacket of sorts, having convenient pockets for my pipe and tools. Thus it now carries a redolence of youthful irony and the musk of pipe tobacco once more...