March 25, 1998
Vintage clothing weaves way into life of collector
By Garret Leiva
Herald staff writer
They say clothes make the man, but Nancy Bordine might take exception to that statement. After all, clothes are an aspect tightly interwoven into the life of this Traverse City woman.
As a collector of vintage clothing, Bordine stuffs the closets in her 1904 home with coats and dress, shoes and hats from bygone eras.
Her collection is more than mere buttons and bows. Each lapel, every cuff is a chapter in the pages of history. And as with any story, some pages are more memorable than others.
"To me, it is interesting to see how history is reflected in clothes," said Bordine, chairwoman of the Con Foster Historical Museum's annual vintage fashion show April 19 at the City Opera House.
Examining the fabric of history, Bordine finds the social changes of each time period, especially women's, marked indelibly in clothing.
In the Roaring '20s, hemlines came up and women showed off their ankles for the first time. Shoulder pads grew in size during World War II as women had to shoulder more responsibility on the home front. In the turbulent 1960s, women showed a freedom from conventional fashion by going braless.
Historically, Bordine's cadre of clothing runs a gamut of Civil War-era coats to red leather go-go boots. The collection, including shoes numbering in the hundreds, takes up some serious room. Her husband, Larry, even has built new closet space recently to house the ever-growing collection.
"I like to buy clothes as souvenirs when we travel," noted Bordine, who picks up her buys at garage sales, thrift stores, church rummage sales and estate sales.
"Other people buy little spoons or plates and hang them on the kitchen wall. For me, I find something cool and wear it."
During her travels, the registered nurse finds vintage clothing for as little as 25 cents, which she later patches up with needle and thread. Some of these acquisitions border on the bizarre. Others are unexpected surprises.
One such example is a pair of "granny boots" she bought in Eagle Harbor in the Upper Peninsula. The lace-up, spike-heel boots don't seem strange until you examine the soles and read the manufacturer's name. "Most people when they think of Keds think basketball," said Bordine of the turn-of-the-century boots.
Another pair of women's boots that she picked up in a Northport antique store are a literal interpretation of the phrase "having two left feet." The boots, while both left footed, were worn as a conventional pair. "I joke about what kind of dancer she was," Bordine said.
Other clothing curiosities in Bordine's collection include coats with "monkey fur" collars (actually gorilla hair), a psychedelic vest she once wore to play Sonny Bono, and a dress she describes as the world's ugliest: a green vinyl number with a prominent pink anchor on the front.
While the clothing itself makes for interesting discoveries, other times it is what is inside the clothes that she finds intriguing.
Coat and pants pockets have yielded a treasure-trove of personal affects. "You find some neat history in pockets," said Bordine, who once found a $100 bill of Confederate currency.
Another time a 1934 penny in the pocket of a homemade coat helped Bordine date the article of clothing.
But not all of her finds have been monetary. She once found a switchblade in the pocket of a tuxedo that had belonged to a family who had lost their fortune in the stock market crash of 1929.
While the clothes she collects certainly shaped lives in the past, they also have played an intricate part in her own. Take the box of clothes she bought for $100 just to get her hands on an 1840s' coat.
"I wasn't really interested in the other clothes but agreed to buy the bunch. Later when I started dating Larry and realized we were going to get married, I started wondering what I was going to wear," recalled Bordine.
"Then I remembered there was an old wedding gown at the bottom of the box. I stitched it up and repaired the fabric and that's where my wedding dress came from."