I have a closet dedicated to all the clothes I never wear: tailored suits with calf-length skirts, jackets with peplums and padded shoulders, Diane-Von-Furstenberg-look wrap dresses (which are still nice, I just have no occasion to wear them).

Some are too snug now, or too out of fashion. Mostly, they don’t fit my current lifestyle.

These days I walk to work—parking fees having skyrocketed—and I dress for ease of movement.

I haven’t worn any of the high heels that stand expectantly at the back of the closet. Whenever I catch a glimpse of them now, I wonder how I ever did.

Most have heels that are a manageable two inches, but some are higher. Did I really wear them?

I can remember the way my feet would throb after an hour or so teetering about on my tiptoes.

For some reason, those shoes made me feel powerful and pretty.

Now I lace up sneakers or zip up ankle boots for the mile-long walk to the campus where I work.

I must stomp hard the whole way there because I have to change the heels on my boots about once a year. The cost of doing so is almost equal to the cost of the boots themselves. But a comfortable boot, a boot that can carry you to and from work, is worth holding onto.

The items in that closet, though, are not. Even so, I’ve kept them for years—there, in that closet at the back of the house—just hanging.

I’ve arranged the clothes in neat zipper garment bags, keeping them at the ready, just in case I have an occasion to wear a tailored suit with padded shoulders.

Who knows?

Among the suits is one I bought in the winter of 1990 when I was readying myself for job interviews.

Mother and I went to the Hudson Belk at Crabtree Valley Mall in Raleigh during the Christmas sales and found it.

“What about this one, Mother?” I asked as I pulled the suit jacket off the rack.

“It’s nice,” Mother noted. “The brown complements your hair.”

“That’s tobacco colored,” the saleswoman corrected.

Most of the suits on the rack were bold primary colors—royal blue or robin red—or sickly pastels with flower prints. I despaired of finding anything appropriate to wear to an interview for a job in Japanese literature.

But this suit was different.

The tobacco colored suit

It came with a slender pencil skirt and a short jacket that nipped in at the waist.

Designed by Elliott Lauren – dry clean only – the garment cost much more than we had anticipated.

Before we could move on, the saleswoman grabbed a silk blouse in a deep purple hue and pushed me into the dressing room. The jacket fit just right, but the skirt was too large, so the woman rushed back to the rack and brought me a smaller size, which she thrust over the dressing room door.

It never occurred to me that you could mix and match sizes!

Mother’s eyes lit up when I stepped out to show her.

“Oh, Becky, that’s the one.”

The suit was modest, understated, and elegant.

It was me. Or rather, it made me look like the me I wanted to be: a distinguished university professor.

I can’t remember how much it cost now. We’d found it on the sales rack, but Mother and I were used to shopping at Sears and Roebuck or J.C. Penneys. The suit was more than either of us had ever paid for a garment.

Mother bought it for me. An early Christmas present.

I wore the suit to three interviews that January.

It gave me confidence.

Of the three interviews, two resulted in job offers.

The suit became my special talisman.

After I moved to St. Louis to start my job at Washington University, I occasionally wore the suit to conferences and important lectures or anytime I needed to look particularly professional, but for the most part, it has hung in my closet, waiting.

Now the waistband is too snug and the wool fabric too scratchy.

I can’t help but think it is still stylish, even with the padded shoulders.

If I gave it away, would it bring another woman confidence? Would it walk her into a job offer? Would anyone even wear it?

Next to the suits, I have a bag with pretty dresses, at least one of which I bought in 1991 before I left Japan—before I moved away to take the job the tobacco-colored suit had gotten for me.

Maybe if I lose a little weight, I can wear the dress again.

There are two shin-length cotton shifts that my sister Beth gave me.

One is aqua green, the other purple. I remember how pretty she looked wearing them when she traveled with me in Japan during the summer of 2006—so elegant and slender.

She gave them to me when she retired.

“I’m not going to need dresses like these anymore,” she said.

She cleaned out her closets and gave away the things that were no longer needed in her new life in the mountains.

I should do the same.

Lately, I’ve been looking through that closet trying to decide what to give away and what to keep.

I’ll keep my sky-blue academic vestments from Columbia University. I may have a chance to wear them again.

I’ll keep the pretty frock I bought in Japan, too, for no reason other than it makes me happy.

The tobacco-colored suit will stay with me a little longer.

It connects me to my mother, to that shopping trip we made together, to the dreams she held for me—dreams so precious she was able to spend more on one suit than she’d likely spent all year on clothing for herself.