Some people are repelled by the idea of second-hand clothing. They don’t like imagining the garment’s previous life. I can understand this, but I love it for just that reason. I could swear that some of my dresses are haunted by the spirits of their previous owners. One watermark taffeta ball gown makes me into a Grace Kelly type, someone cool and blonde capable of holding both an hors-d’oeuvre and a glass of Champagne without spilling either (my usual trick is to spill both). The odd faded patch or tear just adds to a garment’s charm, for me. Even the stains can sometimes seem romantic (barring the ones under the armpits – it’s pretty hard to idealise those) as they map a life well lived, filled with plenty of parties and dinners and picnics on the grass. Wearing a vintage garment is the closest you can get to wearing a story. (As I said, don’t ask me where I bought my dress unless you want a novel in reply).

Here’s one story.

On holiday with my husband, I bought a white brushed-cotton pencil dress. The label was Juliet of Christchurch, but I bought it in Nelson, a beach town at the north end of New Zealand’s South Island. We went back home to Christchurch, the dress hung in my closet, and life went on. A few months later I visited my favourite Christchurch vintage store and spotted a very familiar fabric in the corner. It was the matching jacket for my Nelson dress – same label, same button detail.
“Where did you get that?” I asked the vintage store owner, wild-eyed. I must have sounded slightly mad, but when I explained she told me that she had bought it in Nelson, too – years earlier. Somehow the pieces had become separated. Clearly it was meant to be.

I wore that dress and jacket to my first meeting with my publishers, hoping that some of its magic would rub off on me.

I have been collecting vintage clothes for three years now – ever since I started writing my first proper novel. I did not see the relationship between the two until I wrote a blog post on the subject: “A writer’s life is a recycled, passed-down, rumpled and second-hand thing. We are endlessly recycling material that we have absorbed, old pieces of fabric bonded with the slow, reasoned application of stitches. If I had to represent my writing as a garment, it would be something colourful, handmade (with dropped stitches and puckering in places) and rebuilt from scraps of old material. And, like the 60-year-old clothes I wear, I hope that my writing will age beautifully and give someone else pleasure when it comes time to pass it on.”

I’m going to carry on wearing my stories while I write them, even if it does mean the odd tear or mysterious stain now and then.

The Cry of the Go-Away Bird by Andrea Eames is published by Harvill Secker today.

Andrea Eames was brought up in Zimbabwe, where she attended a Jewish school for six years, a Hindu school for one, a Catholic convent school for two and a half, and then the American International School in Harare for two years. Andrea's family moved to New Zealand in 2002. Andrea has worked as a bookseller and editor and lives in Texas with her husband. The Cry of the Go-Away Bird is her first novel.