I recently saw a fashion segment on television in which 23-year-old designer Zac Posen taught actress Natalie Portman how to “age” a T-shirt. Soak it in vinegar, salt and water, but first, make sure it is a cotton/Lycra blend. The liquid combination will eat away at much of the cotton, leaving that trendy, threadbare look, which is just the few remaining threads of cotton clinging to the Lycra. That’s a useful tip if anyone is looking to save money, since faux-vintage shirts are being sold at stores like Urban Outfitters for prices nearing $30 dollars. Thirty bucks for a t-shirt that is a forger of its own history.

They say things like “Cheers Dublin!” and “Everyone Loves an Italian Girl” (or an Irish girl, or a German girl). Urban Outfitters sells a hot pink T-shirt with a cartoon pig and the slogan, “Please don’t eat me, I love you.” There are modified state slogans, such as “New Jersey: only the strong survive” or “Not everything is flat in Kansas” (which conveniently falls across the chest). And of course you can boast your tight friendship with major Christian figures with the “Jesus is my homeboy” and “Mary is my homegirl” series.

But here’s the thing – what are our T-shirts saying about us? When we spend $30 on a fake-retro shirt, complete with vintage fonts reminiscent of “The Brady Bunch” logo, it really just says that we’re too lazy to trek out to some thrift stores and find some actual vintage pieces with actual stories behind them.

I have three favorite T-shirts. They are in a random rotation, depending on my mood and laundry cycles. They are perfectly worn and threadbare because I have worn them. A lot.

The first is crimson, with the word “Harvard” arcing across the chest in white, traditional collegiate lettering. The white is faded – the exact outlines of the letters are almost invisible, leaving only an impression of the word. The letters have rubbed through to the back of the shirt, and when I hold it up to the light, the fabric is bare in the shape of each letter of “Harvard,” but backward and in reverse.

I got this T-shirt in a bag of hand-me-downs from my mother’s goddaughter, Tanya. I was 10 and Tanya was 16, and I looked forward to the occasional bag of clothing. Now, Tanya is 28 and getting married in a month, and I still wear the Harvard T-shirt, though I will not be wearing it to her wedding.

The second T-shirt is dark heather gray with reddish orange lettering. It advertises a disco-thon for Easter Seals, sponsored by Pepsi in the 1980s. An old boyfriend – I coveted many of his T-shirts – bought it in a thrift store in suburban New Jersey. He said that the most remote thrift stores have the best selection because they are far from urban populations of 20-something hipsters – vampires who raid racks and bins for the blood of anything vintage. The T-shirt was a practical donation. I told him I liked it, he told me I could have it. I still wear the shirt, and I wore it in the days immediately following our break up – not because I was a sucker for punishment, but because the T-shirt had become more a part of me than of him.

The third T-shirt is boring. It’s plain gray. A men’s small, I bought it on sale in a two-pack at JCrew one spring when I was shopping with my friend Dana’s sister, Johanna. We were having a day when we liked each other more than we liked Dana. The pack included an identical black T-shirt. I can’t explain it, but I hate the black one. I bought them to wear to my summer job at a seafood restaurant, where, for each of the seven summers I worked there, I would have two or three t-shirts devoted to absorbing the fried fish grease smell. The gray T-shirt, somehow, is the only former seafood shirt I have been able to get the smell out of by washing.

My T-shirts are symbols of comfort: of my bed, of sleeping, lounging, reading, doing things outside of the confines of seams and zippers and buttons and collars. Sometimes, on early mornings, I will wear them underneath sweaters or button-down shirts, in an attempt to carry a piece of relaxation into days of obligation and responsibility.

But what I love most about these shirts are the stories behind them. Did Tanya stay up ’til 5 a.m. reading in the Harvard shirt, like I do sometimes? Who disco-ed in the disco shirt? I guess I’m a clothing purist. I cringe at dropping $80 on pair of factory-distressed jeans and I cringe when I see 20 girls wearing the same shirt that proclaims “It’s better in the Hamptons.” Because I guess that’s the bottom line – the other millions of people who have bought a men’s small gray T-shirt from JCrew don’t have the exact same bleach stains along the collar, left from when my Aunt Willie tried to highlight my hair blonde three summers ago.

I’m just a sucker for the real thing.