DEAD DAD'S CLOTHES

a material phoneline between me and my father

With Father’s Day approaching, the two year anniversary of my dad’s passing, and what seems like a swell of my dear ones losing fathers… Sharing this piece feels timely and cathartic. Thanks for reading.

Love, Mara

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This essay appears in Dossier Magazine Issue No. 4, available on newsstands now.

MATERIAL WORLDS

My dad, Monte Hoffman, lived in a big, ivy-covered, red-brick Victorian house in Buffalo, New York. He lived there from the time he joined the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra as a classical concert cellist in the 1960s until he died, in May of 2024.

The house has nine closets between three floors. Each was packed with the clothes he wore through every decade, every version of his body, every trend, every aesthetic he adopted. Because of his profession, he had an impressive collection of tuxedos, with their accompanying cummerbunds, bow ties, and small vests. Beyond the tuxes, his taste really ranged, depending on the decade: Italian shirts and pants, Tommy Bahama “Caribbean wear,” Coogi sweaters, Dockers, Versace jeans and hand-embroidered tunics and multicolor-striped bell-bottoms from his “hippie” era. Hundreds of pieces were crammed into the closets, all on wire hangers.

For many years before he died, I would rummage through his closets and drawers to find decades-old gems. I was always so delighted that his pressed cotton, tailored, button-down shirts, with French cuffs and a monogrammed MKH over the heart, fit me. I loved imagining that my father (at one point in his life, as a grown man) had been my same size. I have a very slim frame, and the father I knew growing up and as an adult was never close to my build. But his clothes tell another story.

80’s white tux jacket with 60’s slim pants

Each trip home to see him was like a visit to the gift shop of an impressive museum of someone’s very eclectic life, of someone who held on to everything.

It gave him great pleasure when I would find things of his that I wanted, a validation as to why he held on to it all. He would brag about its designer or value. He loved that his fashion-designer daughter wanted to wear the garments that had defined his aesthetic over the years of his life.

My dad was my person. He adored me. He drove me crazy. He challenged me. He was so proud of me. We’ve passed lifetimes with each other, and this last one as father and daughter was sweet and complicated and deeply bound to a contract around care and love and timing.

About three months before he died, I told him I was closing my brand. He was so scared for me, beside himself at first, perhaps terrified that I wouldn’t make it any other way, or maybe that I would disappear. He eventually came to his senses and remembered who I am, remembered that I am an artist who creates from my heart for purpose, for the absolute alchemy of it all. I will always find a way to make meaning, to make beauty from anything, everything. Death and all.

Early 90s Tuxedo

On the morning of May 25, 2024, I went to his house to shower and change. After spending the previous nights in a recliner beside him in hospice, I was exhausted, aching, and in the final stretch of walking him home. It was a role that I knew was also part of our contract, a job I had always prayed I would be lucky enough to have the honor to fulfill. To hold him through his very last exhale, to deliver him lovingly with grace and dignity to his next celestial incarnation. After showering, I went through his closet and found one of his concert shirts. It was a cotton-and-polyester blend, something I would not usually wear, but today it was okay. It was right. It wasn’t a shirt for a tuxedo but for a concert that required a black suit. It was still pressed and stiff. It felt appropriate. I had a strong knowing that today would be the day, and it was important that I was dressed for it. For him, his life, for us.

The morning of May 25th 2024, wearing his crisp white concert shirt to be with him on what would be his last day

My sister and I sat on either side of his bed in that hospital room, waiting. It all felt so serious. In so many ways, my father had lived many parts of his life very seriously: his exceptional talent and accomplishments through his music, his prestigious collections of art and objects. A few nights before, two of his dear friends and fellow cellists from the Buffalo Philharmonic came to hospice to perform for him. One of them played my father’s cello, the one he had performed with for decades. He lay unconscious, but all of us knew he heard and loved every note of Bach’s “Cello Suite No. 1,” which filled that room, the hallways of that hospital, and the cavities of our hearts, throats, and eyes. It was beauty and heartbreak and ending and life, all at once.

My father also had a very salt-of-the-earth side to him. He was a man who watched Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune every evening, had family-sized packs of Twizzlers and Little Debbies hidden under the piles of papers on his bedside table. He was a man who fell asleep every night to Shark Tank and was known to carry a pair of plastic, fake Billy-Bob rotted teeth in his pocket to slip on whenever the mood struck him.

We sat in that room — waiting, praying, serious — until we realized it was almost 7 p.m.: Wheel of Fortune time. If we knew anything about this man, we knew he would be very upset to miss a show. So we watched Wheel of Fortune, then Jeopardy!. We screamed answers at the TV the way he always did. We laughed. We got the joke. It was the gift of levity, the letting go. Jeopardy! ended. We turned off the TV. And very shortly after, Monte took his final bow.

Since his departure, my father’s closets have been my sacred space, my way to keep returning to him.

We aim to sell his house this spring, and clearing it out has been a sizable task. He always told me to hold onto the house for at least a year after he died. I think he couldn’t bear the idea of his personal museum being dismantled, and, in some way, whether he was conscious of it or not, he wanted to stay there for as long as possible, even in nonphysical form. No question: He had his haunt planned out.

90’s tux vest with 80’s tux pants

We’ve made five trips back to the house so far, each making a larger dent in the empty-ing. On this last one, I dedicated my time to the closets. I made piles of what should go to Goodwill, what will go to our local recycling center, and what will become a part of my permanent “Monte K. Hoffman” collection. I also started documenting myself in these pieces. It was wild to see how these different articles of clothing — spanning years, waist- lines, and trends — all had a way of working together. His oversized white tux jacket (early 2000s) paired with slim, bell-bottom-esque pants from the late ’70s made for a very runway-ready silhouette. The concert vest, worn with nothing underneath, and a pair of “casual” pleated pants from the ’90s, his white tux vest and oversized black tux pants, the printed vacation shirt combined with ’60s hip-huggers ... they almost looked as if they were made for me.

One of Monte’s “vacation shirts” from the late 70’s with khaki hip-huggers

There are a few of his button-downs circa late 1960s — cotton, a perfect shade of light blue, very slim cut, and monogrammed that I have had since way before he died. I have set limits on how much I wear them because the thought of not being able to wear “him” for the rest of my life is just too sad. Even though I have washed these shirts, I can still smell him on them. It is subtle, deep, the way I imagine an animal can forever smell its owner through the fibers.

What an outstanding thing it is to carry each other, literally on our backs, on our bodies, for lifetimes, through threads. No wonder I have spent the greater part of my life creating wearable articles. Our clothes are artifacts that, ultimately, serve as tools of preservation. They carry our essence, our smell, our fear, our love.

This dressing series feels like a beginning, something I’ve just scratched the surface of. It feels like Monte and I found a secret material phoneline we can use to co-create. He’s loving this. I can feel it in my bones, his pleasure in seeing the actual material of his life continue living, being reinterpreted, reworn, reintroduced. Perhaps something will be reborn in me through this too.

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This essay appears in Dossier Magazine Issue No. 4, available on newsstands now. Purchase your copy here.