The other morning, I was pulling on a T-shirt and saw the label and I was struck by the idea that my closet is like a little financial timeline for me.

As we wrap up the third month of un-/wildly under-employment I sort of laughed as I picked up the Banana Republic t-shirt and put it on.

I would not shop in Banana Republic right now.

It was a plain black t-shirt and, let’s be real, I own roughly 8,000,000 of those. But I remember buying this one. I bought it with a much fancier pair of black pants than I usually buy too.

It was for opening night at Big Apple Circus and I felt like I was ballin’ back in those days with my $70k salary and housing and food expenses paid for.

I dropped $100 on basic black clothes without batting an eye.

And I still really like those clothes too. As a matter of fact, for year two with BAC, I went back to buy a second pair of those expensive black pants.

In defense of more expensive clothes, I will also say that those have been my go-to black clothing for three years now and they have held up well.

Also in my closet is a lot of Old Navy blacks – my decent living, budget friendly choices. They had an extra long t-shirt that I really loved for a while there because even tucked in, that thing never came out when I was bending over.

Old Navy, at one time, also made my favorite black cargo pants for like 10 seconds, though they weren’t that sturdy and didn’t last very long when wearing them every day for weeks at a time. But they were so comfortable and had so many pockets.

Old Navy and Kohl’s clothes feel like financial comfort to me. Reasonable quality and reasonable price.

And then there’s all the Walmart clothes in there. Walmart clothes are the mark of either I barely have any money or I just got robbed on tour and this is the store for miles and I need some clothes.

The t-shirts are actually not that bad, but none of the clothes from Walmart seem to hold up well to how often I wind up wearing black clothes (which is literally day in and day out when I’m working).

I talk a lot about the wildly erratic life in the arts both in financial terms of job income being all over the place to professional satisfaction of jobs being all over the place (for instance, one gig I might be running an entire artistic department and then next I might be an ASM sweeping the floor and making coffee and the next I might be the only SM on a gig that really should’ve had three and I’m making almost no money to do everything myself).

But this was the first time I realized it was reflected a bit in my closet too.

And I’m looking forward to a future full of Old Navy and Kohl’s black shirts, with some Banana Republic contracts too. Though at the moment, I’d even be delighted for a Walmart gig.

So on that note, important question, where do you get your favorite work clothing?