The Shirt That Changed How I Think About Aging

It is freaky — and frightening — to see the 20-year nostalgia cycle turn. You glimpse versions of your old self in the styles of strangers. Over the years, I, too, have tried out bygone tastes: I’ve worn bell-bottoms, midcentury midi dresses, skinny little cigarette pants (think Audrey Hepburn in “Funny Face”), velour tracksuits (like casino crawlers, power walkers and TV mobsters) and preppy polo shirts that gave me the vibe of a diversity hire at a country club. Now each of these looks is again on the streets of New York City, where I live. Every other young person is a hip doppelgänger of me at 19, only now they’re carrying vapes and, because Y2K fashion is back, cross-body messenger bags that make them look less like TikTok influencers and more like Web 2.0 hackers. Did I mention that I just turned 35? I’m mainlining moisturizer and worrying about inflammation. I’m also generally inflamed. Conscious of all kinds of ticking clocks, I’m considering stretching my style and wearing very short, very tightfitting clothes for the first time ever. If not now, when?

And two days after my birthday, in June, in the midst of something like a pre-midlife crisis, I bought a throwback jersey: a cherry-red reissue of Dawn Staley’s 1996 Olympic basketball jersey, purchased from Mitchell & Ness, a company that specializes in vintage gear. I went to their flagship store in Philadelphia, where Staley and I both grew up. I got it oversize so I’d have the option of wearing it like a jersey dress, that horrendous hybrid garment that was popular in the early aughts when I was a teenager.

So many jerseys on the market are standard replicas of the ones contemporary pro athletes wear. They are emblems of the present tense: You wear one to support active stars, to pledge allegiance to the way things are now. Throwback jerseys, on the other hand, are postmodern clothes; they evoke all sorts of references and encode ideas about time and change. A single, numbered mesh shirt calls to mind a specific athlete’s achievements across eras, and their limbs shifting within it: The shot clock winding down. Heaved passes. Miraculous catches. Game winners, sore losers. Blood spit onto ripped, moisture-wicking fabric. Doors and championship windows opening and closing. Auspicious debuts, farewell tours.

A retro jersey signals that the wearer is something of a sports historian, unbeholden to the recency bias that affects so many talking heads and fair-weather fans. Just as old concert tees transport music lovers back in time, these garments have a similar boomerang effect, twisting the necks of passers-by and returning them to formative memories. Whenever I see an Allen Iverson Philadelphia 76ers jersey in the wild (satiny black with red stitching), I remember that sometime in the early 2000s I watched my 20-something cousin try, and fail, to sneak into a space where Iverson was having his hair braided. (To do what: Flirt? Get his number?) Every so often I spot those old shirts, and a vision of him driving by in a burgundy Bentley pops into my head.

Dawn Staley is also a hometown hero. She played high school hoops in North Philadelphia, and then coached at Temple University, my alma mater, for eight years. When I was a kid, I would pass a mural of her likeness in Center City Philly. Relatively few women are honored with throwback jerseys from their playing careers, so it feels special to wear Staley’s: It is a way of being conversant with the eternal discourse about gender and age, the inevitable discrepancies, the double standards and the job offers that never come. It’s a way of thinking into the gaps of Staley’s career evolution, from high school phenom to college baller, then Olympian, then W.N.B.A. All-Star, then N.C.A.A. championship-winning strategist and four-time Naismith Coach of the Year. Her throwbacksrepresent windows opening, and then closing, and then opening again.