My Love Bird is Dead, so I bought a Goldfish (tee)

Around a month ago, the first Sunday that the weather was nice enough to go outside without wearing a coat, I had the bad idea to wear one of my favorite, if not my favorite, tee under my fleece hoodie jacket to go to the park. Really, I don't know why I wore this tee instead of just a plain tee since we couldn't even SEE it under the hoodie and my husband was dressed very casual, I guess that I was just happy to be able to wear it again after all those winter months.
The tee was a Tory Burch "Love bird" tee that I bought myself last summer as a birthday present (I'm a summer girl). It retailed for $90 (or maybe $97) but I got it for half the price and I simply LOVE(D) the fabric (it's the same cotton than the Jcrew cut-flower applique tee but less clingy) and the bird (which wasn't printed but embroided with a dark brown thread). Plus, I bought it at the Tory Burch boutique itself knowing that it was for my birthday, which made the shopping experience quite special.

I use the past tense because that day of a month ago my daughter was playing with the zipper of my jacket and a little piece of fabric got trapped in the zip. For the life of me I couldn't take it out, the zip wouldn't bulge. I called my husband and neither he could have the best of it (he is very good with his hands). So, at some point, I just pulled the tee and the hoodie apart and made a BIG HOLE in the tee.I mean a big hole, not something that you could hide or sew.
I can't do a BEFORE and AFTER because I don't have pics of the tee before the accident but the pics of the AFTER speak for themselves:





I couldn't be mad against my daughter (as my husband put it, it was my fault for letting her play with the zipper), poor thing, and life went on, I changed myself (put on the plain tee this time) and went off to the park.
But the following days I realized that I really missed my love bird, so I decided that I had to replace it with a new one. I immediately went on ebay to see if could get the same one, but I had no luck. I also checked the Tory website but it was longtime gone.
If I couldn't get my love bird back, I needed to find something similar but after many trips to Jcrew, Old Navy and the Gap (and even more high-end stores) I was desperate. No graphic tee could ever replace my love bird!

Then, one day, I made an encounter with the Jcrew "golden fish" tee. OK, it isn't the same thing but I had a "recognition" feeling when I saw a L in a store like I had finally found the successor of my love bird. I hadn't paid much attention to this tee when it came out because 1) I still had my Love bird 2)I was much more excited by the zebra beaded tee that came out in the same release. Plus, having paid $68 for the zebra I wasn't in the mood for putting any money in another tee.
Of course it was sold out in my size and the fact that I hadn't seen any other in my numerous trips to Jcrew lately made me think that it was sold out everywhere in the city, so I did it a "we will find it" right away with the red phone and two days after I received an email by Jcrew that told me that they had found it and would ship soon.

More than 10 days later the package arrived and, no mistakes, it was my goldfish (should I say "golden goldfish"?). It was funny to see that it came from a store in Carmel, CA (the store label was printed on the box), almost as if they had fished it out of the ocean for me.

I haven't worn it yet but here it is:





I was a little bit afraid of its sheerness, especially after seeing a girl in the subway wearing it with (I guess) a black tank under it (the effect was horrible but I can understand that she didn't have any other underwear on hand to wear, it happens). It is sheer for sure (it's in slub cotton) but I bought a S instead of a XS and wearing it with a nude bra or tank it's OK.

By the way, I still wear the love bird tee around the house. My daughter must have been a little bit shocked by the whole zipper situation because now she always wants me to put on the "tee with hole". I just have to remind myself that it has a hole when I venture outside the apartment to throw the garbage!

Do you have a story like this one, where you watched one of your favorite clothes die young? Do you have the fish tee?