She learned the value of a dress from her Lithuanian mother
Now she wants to donate clothing to Ukraine
Fabric is a commodity. A beautiful dress, on the other hand, can be a product of change. For Jan Look, the war in Ukraine brings back a flood of memories, and a compulsion to help.
The Frankfort woman reached out a few weeks back, asking if I knew how to get gently used clothing to Ukrainians still in nation or those fleeing the war-torn country. At the onset of the war last year, clothing drives were ubiquitous. But, as it often does, momentum has since waned.
Still, Look said, good, quality clothing is both a necessity and an uplifter to people in need.
She learned this both directly and indirectly from her mother, the late Aldonna Janulis, who once gave her own beautiful dress to a woman she befriended in Lithuania. It was 1993 and Lithuania was newly freed from Communist control. Look’s then-74-year-old matriarch signed up for a tour of the economically struggling nation where her parents had lived before immigrating to America.
Look, who taught English for high school District 230 and now teaches at Joliet Junior College, and her late sister, Joyce, were in the throes of raising kids and managing careers at the time. They couldn’t accompany their aging mother. But, despite having undergone lung surgery the previous year, Janulis was determined to go.
“My sister and I were worried. We couldn’t even contact her over there,” Look said. Their concerns were justified when, upon return, their mother showed them photos of places surrounded with barbed wire.
Look said her mother was a product of a tough, hard-headed culture. She’d lost her own mother when she was only 2.
“Her dad couldn’t take care of her and her sisters so he put them in an orphanage,” Look said.
Janulis and her siblings were adopted into Lithuanian families, Look said.
Back then, Look said, the West Pullman area of Chicago was a hub for Lithuanians. She remembers her mother speaking the language with friends and relatives. She also remembers attending Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church and eating at Lithuanian restaurants.
Look suspects her mother had wanted to visit her homeland for a long time but Communist control made that prohibitive. After Lithuania declared independence in 1990 and the Soviet Union fell a year later, travel opened up. But conditions were still rough, she said.
“It was cold that September. But the hotel wasn’t allowed to turn the heat on until October 1st ‘“she said.
Look said her mother traveled across the Eastern European country learning about the history and participating in cultural activities. It was at an event in the capital of Vilnius that she befriended a woman doctor.
The physician admired Janulis’s dress and, after telling her how hard it was to find stylish clothing in Lithuania, the woman made an exchange: rich, Lithuanian fabrics for one smartly styled dress. The doctor was so happy, Look recalled her mother telling them.
After Janulis returned to her home in Country Club Hills, a cross continental pen pal relationship began. Look said when her mother passed in 1996, she and her sister decided to send all of her 30-some dresses to the doctor in Lithuania. They believed her mother, who had a soft spot for oppressed people, would appreciate that.
“Even though she never had a lot of money, my mother always had the very best of clothes,” a phenomenon Look believes many “old world” cultures still embrace. She’s heard similar stories from her own students of different cultures, she said.
Colbey Emmerson Reid is the chair of fashion studies at Columbia College in Chicago. She said there is a long history of scarcity fueling creativity in fashion, from the British campaign to “make do and mend” during WWII to Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols safety pinning thrift shop items together and inadvertently kickstarting the punk aesthetic.
In addition, she said, different cultures may also think differently about cleanliness and fashion, with some valuing a natural, unfussed look and others thinking “the opposite: if you want to show that you’re clean, you ornament yourself — wear perfume, scarves, nice clothes, oil in your hair, makeup and other cosmetics. This shows that you took trouble about yourself, put effort into your appearance.”
Either way, she added, it’s important to not to make assumptions about the way people dress. It could come down to simply personal preference. Look said, in her family, dressing nicely was a way to defy poverty.
“No one knew we were bringing pop bottles to the store to get money for dinner,” she said.
“For people who didn’t have a lot, it was important to be able to say, ‘I do have something.’ It was a (symbol) of strength in that culture, that nothing will keep you down,” Look said. “My sister and I inherited that perpetual optimism.”
They also inherited their mother’s desire to help. Before they could send her dresses overseas, Look said, they needed a translator to decipher the letters, and then write one to the doctor in Lithuania explaining the bequeathment. They found help at the Lithuanian Center in Lemont, which ended up shipping the garments for them.
And, now, Look is hoping to find a way to ship quality garments to Ukraine. But many of the places that were collecting goods at the beginning of the war are no longer doing so.
“Unfortunately, all donation sites have been so inundated, that they are no longer able to facilitate collecting and disbursing the items, as it is too costly to ship and/or store,” said Jaroslawa (Geri) Abramiuk, manager of the Ukrainian Cultural Center in Chicago.
Still, Look said, she will continue to pursue opportunities to send shirts, pants and, yes, dresses, to Ukraine.
“When I look at those people, I see myself,” she said. Not only are there physical similarities, there is an emotional connection, she said.
“At the onset of a war, everyone wants to pitch in. But it’s been a year now, and passion wanes, attention wanes. But it shouldn’t,” she said. “I think people still need things.”
Long after the Communist takeover of Lithuania, she said, after the news coverage receded, the people still needed help. Even after the country became independent, the people still struggled, Look said.
“There was never a doubt in our minds that they needed help,” she said. “I think it’s the same with Ukraine.”