...made me think of "Shirt Worthy," a New York Times Magazine article written by David Giffels in 2007. In particular, the first line of Matt S.'s "Shirt Luck" ("When my oldest brother packed his bags for San Francisco two years ago, I felt like everything cool about me was going with him." -- Nice first line, by the way) brought Giffels's essay to mind for me.
In just 1,000 words, Giffels uses the t-shirt as 1. a way to explore male relationships, 2. a vehicle through which to tell a coming of age story about a boy into manhood and, 3. a lens through which to examine how masculinity and codes of masculinity change throughout one's life (the shirt means different things when he is a young man and when he is a father).
Similarly, in Kristen's piece, she shows us not only the coming of age story of a girl through a nightgown, but the difficulty of completely surrendering that girlhood, too.
Though I'm citing Kris and Matt S. in particular here (just to make a point about a developing theme among the work I'm reading), a lot of your pieces function on many similarly interesting levels. Shirts and shoes become the lens through which the reader sees many of you grow up. Fascinating!
Keep up the good writing, guys and gals.
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