Posts Tagged ‘apparel’
University Of Illinois Sportswear & Gifts
University of Illinois Sportswear Anyone presently or formerly associated with the University of Illinois should have some article of Fighting Illini clothing. At least a coffee mug. Ideally some Fighting Illini sportswear. Some no doubt pride themselves on having a closet full of the orange and blue. Mine is, certainly, and it’s the stuff I manage, out of pride or nostalgia or both, to keep the cleanest.
Sure, other clothes will come into your life, but it’s never the same as those college colors. Why, sometimes it’s worth calling up those old silly friends from back in the day and inviting them over to throw the football around in a yard that has more than enough dirt and not nearly enough grass. (One more thing to attend to.) It won’t surprise you to know that the Fighting Illini stick together — so there’s a lot of orange and blue rolling around in the mud.
University of Illinois Sportswear & Gifts
For those of us who stayed in the midwest, hoodies are like a weekend uniform during the fall days. My second biggest friend wears these sweatpants (with “Illinois” down the side) that have endured many harsh winters and much abuse on old couches when we’d watch a game on TV. My biggest friend married a really sweet girl from school and they’re a lesson for all of us — how to make the shift from the last days of childhood into the summer days of adulthood. And be happy.
That comes with risks though. Like being one of those couples that wears matching baseball caps. He wears a blue cap with orange bill; she wears the orange cap with blue bill. It’s something you get used to. Geekiness is sometimes the price of contentment.
University of Illinois Sportswear
But those colors all start to blur when everybody’s running around anyway. The orange and blue gets a little muddy, but the funny stories and old jokes get kicked up with the rest of the grass. Anyway I always set out to win, and generally end up with my spine collapsed by my second biggest friend, who thinks it’s very funny to sit on what he knows is my favorite hoodie.
And that’s where we end up generally, late afternoons in the beginnings of my yard, wearing the well-worn Fighting Illini gear of our past glories. Sure, the sportswear gets dirty, but it also gets cleaner than the rest, seems like. Until the next time everybody comes over.
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University Of Illinois T-Shirts Sportswear
University of Illinois Fighting Illini t-shirts sportswear and apparel. A person inevitably builds up an impressive collection of t-shirts over the course of a lifetime. Anyone who has graduated from the University of Illinois no doubt has at least a few well-worn Fighting Illini shirts in the closet. It’s a real-live memory, rendered in short-sleeve orange and blue.
It’s a funny thing, because especially with t-shirts, there’s some kind of residual memory attached to seeing people in those college shirts — even years later. Like some personable fat guy sweating in an Illinois tee reminds you of that friend who somehow managed not to ruin his or your reputation (and life) because his version of fun corresponded to “very dangerous.” Or the way that one girl wore that orange shirt which looked just like all the other shirts — only she wore it a few important degrees better, and then, that meant love.
University of Illinois T-Shirts Sportswear & Apparel
Those two, of course, got married. He became a state senator. She hosted a very popular regional cooking show. Somehow all your memories of the two of them are superimposed on the Illinois colors, on the tees that they both wore on their way to meeting each other. It was a younger time then.
What I like about the t-shirt is that it’s the thing we keep longest. Well, and sweatpants, maybe. But for the sake of this argument we’ll say t-shirts stay in the family well into the next generation. I don’t feel like bootie shorts stick around as long, but again, as I say, it’s open to debate. The tee, though, even as the big orange “I” fades over time, somehow the tee gets better and better. Like wine, but with wine stains.
University of Illinois T-Shirts
And the college t-shirt is particularly resistant to the advance of time. Because those colors never change; that logo doesn’t either. Sure there are new styles, but there’s a kind of tradition to the college tee. It’s a time capsule. So too are mesh shirts and leisure suits and leather chaps, but maybe the point is that the t-shirt is less … incriminating.
I think what I’m getting at is that the t-shirt is some greater thing than just a piece of clothing. It’s there at the beginning of stories, it resists change, it encourages fidelity and adoration and nostalgia. It comes apart with us as well, which proves merely that in the timeless weave of textiles, the t-shirt too is only human.
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