Old Clothes for New

In a metropolis that never quite decided whether it was Edwardian or Jazz-Age, a battalion of fraying overcoats, scuffed boots, and darned stockings drifts from pawn-shop to back-alley cabaret like tumbleweeds of tattered dignity. Josephine Hill’s nimble-fingered seamstress, a solitary orchid sprouting through asphalt, rescues these cast-off skins, believing every stain tells a parable and every missing button once fastened somebody’s fate. Into her candle-lit garret barges Lee Moran’s racetrack tipster, a motormouth dandy whose checked suit is louder than the siren outside; he’s clutching gambling IOUs instead of rent. Eddie Lyons, the tailor downstairs who can turn a frayed cuff into a manifesto, measures the man for a new persona while Mildred Moore—Hill’s boardinghouse confidante, part-time fortune-teller, full-time cynic—warns that fabric can’t hide a soul coming apart at the seams. Over the next reel, coats exchange backs, secrets swap pockets, and identities are re-hemmed: the tipster dons a chauffeur’s uniform to escape loan sharks, the seamstress wears a velvet evening wrap to crash a society auction, and a single pair of second-hand trousers accidentally weds two grooms to one bride. When the final stitch pulls tight, the city discovers that what was discarded has become its newest haute couture, and the only thing more revolutionary than new clothes is the courage to walk naked through your own past.