31dec14wed LAST DAY Richard's Wear

 At right is a 10 to 12 years ago suit--I was still playing around mostly with materials and only shallowly with shapes.   The overlapping lapels still please me tho you have to be careful not to make a naturally huge stomach appear huger.   The stretch gray velvet is terribly comfortable and shines light back--I still love this material.  Cannot get myself Protestant enough to dislike it or avoid it.   Kind of like the way it irritates business"men".  

 The back of this jacket is nicely asymmetric.  But I am, as you can see, still stuck in between contrasting, here orange, patches of obi and blending, gray, patches.  I should have dropped the orange but oh well errors are the steps to greatness.   

This wine colored shirt from kimono is enormously pleasing to me.   The square little orange and white shapes on it are mere irritants.  It is the overall sheen and wine coloring and comfort of wear that I like about it.   The sleeves alone outclass everyone in any room in which I wear it.   I started this blog after losing 24 kilograms so it is not a sequence of fatso bulges like it would have been a year ago.  

Today rode my bicycle in 1 degree weather 2 hours out and 2 hours back without a minute of less than full exertion (the cold made me push on the way home).   Such a great feeling after pushing really hard for four solid hours in freezing weather.  The key for me is good gloves as my hands suffer the cold first and most.  Bought some yesterday and bingo the ride today was warm after all.   I love tackling hills in my highest gear, though an ordinary housewife zoomed past me going up the steepest hill I faced.  What the hell is going on with her leg muscles?   Amazing power.   I was feeling nice and fit till her wake rushed across my slow moving face!!!!!

30Dec14Tue Richard's Wear

 Here at right is the random shapes obi patches on the suit's pants leg (both sides with different random shapes).  Interestingly our research showed that truly randomly made shapes attracted attention faster and held it longer than pseudo-random shapes. Something in the mind like the breaking of conceptual regularity. To get true random shapes is easy.  You draw random-looking (and therefore not truly random) curves.  Then you write a little routine to randomly rotate and intersect them and choose bounded sections in a random order for a sequence, in this case, down the pants leg.   

 This is a mystery.  Kimono material makes the world's best silk shirts by a large margin.  So why aren't ALL shirts made of kimono material?????    It is hard to understand, given the feel of kimono silk is better than that of 600US$ stuff from stuffy dull tailor shops for the rich.  

 At right is the back of the suit jacket.   In this era I was putting contrasting colors on background fabrics like the orange on this sky blue background.  I disliked the result at the time and in recent years I no longer go for contrasting colors, instead going for colors that blend in.  

This is the front of the suit.  Notice the overlapping lapels--held by three buttons, one invisible in back.   Notice the patch on the lower right (reader viewpoint) put there just to keep things asymmetrical.   The sky blue is a stretch velvet (one of my favorite fabrics--so comfortable to wear and such a nice way of handling light).   

CHRISTMAS 25dec14Thr Richard's Wear

Well here is my global warming genre, suit.  It is just a suit without sleeves, and with a nice asymmetry to keep the Louis XIV crap out of my life.   The suit is a gorgeous blue kimono silk.  The shirt also is a vivid, shall we say, orange kimono.   

 The back of the suit is simple with just a side obi patch of random shape.   Just enough to remind viewers that the suit is not factory-made.  I cannot describe really how comfortable to wear these sleeveless kimono-material suits are but Japan makes the strongest silks in Asia, very different than Chinese and Thai silks and with 20 aesthetic principles not found outside Japan.   There is a subtle patterning in the blue of the kimono material of this suit that I did not bother doing a close up to show.  It makes the blue a sort of tiled stone floor pattern.   

 This is my usual winter jacket, short sleeves for comfort of motion and reducing obi wear, very warm, and somewhat lively in coloring.  I hated it originally, thought it a big mistake, but now after wearing it this winter, am becoming fond of it.  There is simply nothing like it currently worn anywhere in Tokyo, or in Manhattan, etc.  You can find vivid stuff but not beautiful vivid stuff for the most part.   

This photo is about the shirt.  It is a rather cheaply made kimono but with strong silk and very warm and comfortable to wear.  The sheen of the way it reflects light combined with its vivid colors and rather random wavey pattern crashes appeal to me.   It has that "Japanese cowboy" look I apparently aim for at times.  The blue pants have that random shape obi patch on blue kimono rock tile pattern kimono material.   I find this outfit really comfortable and the center of attention everywhere I go.   We were are the Royal Park Hotel in Minatomirai Yokohama today and on the club floor all the rich-y people parading there, were out-shone if not out-classed when I strode into each room.   By the way club floors should NEVER serve Lipton teas---or egg powder-derived eggs in the morning.  Any TRUE club floor has an omlet chef there each morning.   The Japanese do not understand luxury!!!

17dec14wed Richard's Wear

 The back of the suit jacket below--nicely asymmetric.  Notice in this genre, circa 1995, I am choosing obi patches that blend into background fabric colors and textures.  The previous "clown" generation did the opposite, orange on gray, orange on blue, green on yellow--too much emphasis on patches already rather visible.   As age wears down my spirit, and decrements my body, an organ here, a sense there--and as humankind, day by day, more and more, disappoints (isn't there some OTHER sort of monkey we all could live among?)--the energy for large scale errors decreases.    The nice thing about young designer competitors is even when they latch onto a good idea, they pursue it so hard and far and fast that it is ugly by the time it reaches public display.   That is why jujitsu was invented.  

 I rather like this front photo--the nagare shapes of the patches and their placement works well with the vertical stripes of the unusual gold-green background stretch fabric.  This is terribly comfortable to weak and because of the stretch background fabric, never needs ironing.   It is an understated way to humiliate every 7000+$ Italian suit in the room---a really fun phenomena, at the expense of monkeys who lack the taste to design things worth seeing and depend on piles of money paid to others to package themselves for "looking as important as I really am"--hear! hear! let us all encourage the little monkeys on their struggles to the top of each tree!

 This is my usual green jacket, that flows two obis together diagonally on one side and vertically on the other, and on the back in a wave pattern that is too symmetrical (so the latter not re-shown here).  

If you maximize the display size of the photo at right you can see the lovely flow patterning and mix of greenish-gold-ish colors that match, with a touch of greater lightness and brightness the green-gold mix of the suit this shirt is under.   

This was not planned--if you have 600 suits and 200 kimono shirts, you can nearly always find whatever mix and match appeals to you at the moment.   

Again, for monkey gaming, this shirt in a room full of expensive cheap-looking white men's dress shirts, makes their inferior factory-made materials shameful indeed.   I am building muscles to improve the shape the shirt is shaped over, but it may take 50 to 70 kilograms more per the 22 set types I do, before a really pleasing overall picture results.  

The important thing about fashion is this--in a pure 100% sense--its power shines and works without effort as you go about your day.  At every bus-stop, restaurant table, sidewalk, meeting, hallway stretch--everyone around, whether they know you or like you or not, have their eyes drawn by the designs themselves.   Research shows how this is layered in 300 millisecond layers---what IS that, wow the shine of light from it, wow the pattern as I draw near, wow the ease and normalcy with which he wears and wields it.   That is Mystery, Sparkle, Pattern, Otherness in succession.   Try doing that with a dark, Calvinist $7000 Italian suit---it turns out to repeat what every other insecure top monkey buys buys buys---they ALL lack the guts and brains to design what works better than European snobbery encumbered dark, hardly visible, drapings.  YUK.    Some monkeys get near the top of their tree and do not dare go down and visit other trees.  

Richard's Wear 13dec14sat

 This is a suit from ten years ago.   It has an overlapping lapel frame in obi patches from two different obis and a left-side down patch for asymmetry on the front (left from reader viewpoint).  The shiny stretch velvet background yellow fabric is VERY comfortable.  

I wear this suit a lot--I like the color, the comfot, the obi layout and against a background of a horde or two of grey suited dismal "business" "men"--the shining yellow looks even more un-dismal.   

 This is the back of the above jacket.  The asymmetry is pronounced---as I like it.   No trace of tiresome symmetries--left-right and up-down are non-childish.  

 This is another shirt, zip front, collar cover, enlarged sleeve width, collar, and cuffs, from a black kimono with elegant pattern (not visible at the photo's distance).   Notice how Calvinist I look in black--women like men in black, the near-death color, because women like men, ahem, how shall I say this politely,------dead.   They fantasize about all that money without that obnoxious male personality in the way.   

 The stripe on the side is two obis, one embedded in the other in a top-bottom flow pattern.  

 This is the vertical view of the long stripe along the pants leg--one obi embedded within the other.  

 If you look carefully at right you see the yellow YKK zipper that fastens each sleeve to the "jacket", so the jacket becomes a vest in summer by removing the sleeves.  I have NO IDEA why all suits do not now do this.  

 This is my familiar green two-obi-combined half-sleeve jacket.  It is very warm, and one side has diagonal inter-mixing of the two obi patterns while the other side has vertical stripe inter-mixing of them. 

This is the back of that jacket, with a large nagare flow pattern mixing the two obi patterns.  Unfortunately the flow is too uniform in width to please me now---so I tolerate its weakness.  

IN CLOSING I have to emphasize how much fun it is to wear this today near my large adjacent train station.   The sun shines and sparkles as I walk and I get eyed by all the young ladies and men, and the old kimono-generation near death generations too.  

Richard's Wear 11dec14thr

This is a 3rd generation suit circa 1983.   The necktie is hated by the Chicago Bulls of the Michael Jordan era.   Notice symmetry is reduced--thank goodness.  Stretch black ladies swimwear fabric as background--needed because obi patches are quite heavy and stiff--normal non-stretch material wrinkles.   Again that slimming effect of making the bright stuff middle with outsides dark.   

 Same orange jacked of two obis mixed, diagonally on left of this photo, vertically on right---LOTS of sewing involved so you never get this sort of stuff from store-bought crap like Gucci.   Half sleeves necessary as obi material develops stress gaps in full sleeve as elbow pressures pull it apart.   The voice of experience as my initial jackets fell, thusly, apart.   

 Back of the same jacked--a flow that is a bit too symmetrical--latest jackets flow also but not so left-right the same-ly.  This mix of obi patterns draws attention--something in the brain wants to figure a pattern from the first impression of mess.  

 The back of the above black and white/color jacket.  This pattern is pleasing to me now--no symmetry except the V and a flow that is not symmetric and place asymmetrically on one side.  

The shirt, if you expand the photo greatly, is a black kimono material with a lovely pattern and great light handling properties, reflectancies.   It is silk of course and very strong and comfortable.  ONLY Japanese silk wears well for years---all other Asian silks fall apart within six months.   I have tried them all over the last 40 years.   

10dec14wed Richard's Wear

 This is a second generation from me, circa 1980.  1) Thicker stretch fabrics, shiny, that last and are warm in 3 seasons 2) same foolish symmetry as before.   3) Slim profile of the obi patches to make me look smaller than I am (it works) 

These days I would never make a design with left right symmetry so I dislike this design intensely--hence wear it with ease (as I said before, I prefer wearing my worst designs).   

 Talk about left right symmetry, how about front back symmetry---YUK.   The total lack of imagination of the back amazes me--was I really that stupid then?   

Even the orange octagons are places at the same width and height on the back--double YUK.   

The second version of the same shirt as previous days, this time also with a necktie hated by the Chicago Bulls of the Michael Jordan era.   

The red hat you cannot by, dear readers.   I buy hats and the first thing I do is throw away the el cheapo band the manufacturer puts on it (just to up the price).  Then bandless, I go to women's dress stores and by women's belts (they fit my head perfectly).  What you see here, therefore is a red hat, band thrown away, with a red doulble line of sequins ladies belt where the el cheapo manufacturer up-the-price band used to be.   ALWAYS my belts are 10,000 times nice looking on the hat than the crap manufacturers put on them.   YUK YUK YUK for the crap from them!

9dec14tue Richard's Wear

This is, I believe, my second oldest suit, made circa 1977.   Again, I was simply keeping entirely boring traditional shapes, and just switching from the world's cheapest ugliest materials (Gucci, Gap, Calvin Klein, etc.) to more comfortable, more lasting, more visual, more lovely materials.   The result---well--nice try but no banana.   I cannot now stand the stupid symmetry--left = right  YUK.   I DO find the stretch shining gold material that the obi patches are upon, very comfortable to walk, sit, move, play sports in.   The obi patches are not obi here, they are uchikake, a painted kind of uchikake, that develops cracks in 6 wears, and flakes off in 14 wears--so I rarely wear this stuff.

 The back reminds me of les Tuilleries--Louis 14th's sick adolescent version of "gorgeous"---more and more spangles.   I LIKE it because it sickens me quickly and purely.  Particularly the damn gardens revolt me----always the right a copy of the left, the up a copy of the down--YUK.   Total lack of design imagination for centuries.   Well if you are rich enough and kill off naysayers, bad taste can cover grandiose amounts of the world making you look for all of history a fool without anyone warning you--Louis, you are making a fool of France and yourself.   

The red hat I love because so many business people are made uncomfortable by it (but not, it seems, in Japan, where US expatriates have more global exposure).   And, of course, in China, it is popular and goes with nearly every restaurant, temple, and tourist sight.   

The necktie is the same as yesterday--hated by the entire Chicago Bulls Basketball team of the Michael Jordan era--to be explain in a later post.   

Altogether an immature impression--someone wanting to design but utterly at this point, 1977, incapable of it.  

8dec14mon Richard's Wear

 Half sleeve jacket of two inter-woven obi materials---very warm, nicely stiff, obis require half sleeves (full sleeves tear apart due to range of motion forces for men).   Notice the diagonal alternative obi patches throughout on one side, vertical similar patches on the other side.   NO factory in the world--Milan, Paris, etc.--will do this much sewing except for bi-annual fashions runway shows.  

 The back of the jacket again is a Nagare flow inter-leaving of the two obi designs.  To be honest--I hate these sorts of all green and all orange obis so I keep them around and use them up for jackets like these.   The obis I use, as below, for suits, I like much better.   Because I dislike the obi materials I use in these jackets, I greatly LIKE these jackets--I can wear and wear them out happily, knowing that replacement patches will always be more to my liking.  I ADORE the clothes I most badly design and use them the most--ridiculous but I have met many others who do exactly the same--their best Italian suit gathering dust in a closet for 12 + years because they like it too much to use.  

 This is, I think, my oldest kimono suit--made in 1977 when I knew absolutely nothing about everything--I had no idea how much I was daily not knowing.   Therefore notice the boring ugly French-like left-right symmetry  YUK.   However, I was smart enough to use black stretch linen-poly-nylon weave fabrics, marked down in sales to less than 10$ a yard on Roosevelt Road in Chicago.   Arlington Heights fabric shops of Chicago's suburbs--BOORRRIIIINGGGG--sexless white people like that stuff.  Roosevelt Road downtown Chicago (200 or so south) gorgeous silks and ethnic fabrics of 20 nations--people who have sex!!!   Plus the Chicago Bulls have 2 stores of their own there--wonderful sales.

The back of the jacket--totally lacking aesthetic imagination and taste--the fabric is the entire message---take a crappy ordinary cut and pattern and substitute for the world's cheapest/ugliest fabrics (used by firms like Gucci etc.) any pretty fabric of quality. 

The hard part is picking good stretch background material--well done in this first experiment suit--and picking obi material (here uchikake material) that is tightly woven and therefore you don't look like a shaggy dog after 10 wears or so.   

Note as my body degrades into old shrunken prune-dom--I improve my packaging!!!!!

 I had no ideas at all about what to do with the gorgeous fabric so I just took entire suit pants panels and substituted uchikake for crappy usual Gap and Gucci like stuff.   

In the sunshine what you see in the back and side photos here SPARKLES as in the front photo above.   It is hard to realize how ugly I personally am when the package is this lovely--at least 50% of fashion's purpose (the other 50% crushing the ego of narcissist psychopath bosses and other top monkeys).   Put a 7000$ Italian suit and me in a lobby and all ALL all ALL all the nubiles will drift me-ward, not 7000$suit-ward.  The 7000$ suit bespeaks monkey on top, my suit bespeaks either courage or nuttiness.

This is the same kimono, same design, different actual shirt worn a couple of days ago--I happened to find its brother in a drawer.  Did not know I had two.  I love the feel of silk, its light-weight warmth in winter, and the sheen as one moves.  Who would guess an old shrunken prune is inside????!!!!!

I lift weights so at least the prune is strong--some compensation for ladies and others fooled by the packaging suit.  

Again the necktie is hated by all the Chicago Bulls of the Michael Jordan era (to be explained in a later blog).   By the way, a web search of 22,000 expensive neckties failed to find ANY of the sort worn here--the taste of the entire world has degenerated--a canary in the coal mine perhaps?

7dec14 What Richard Wears

On a background of shining gold stretch material, somewhat thick so comfortable in winter, are patches in diagonal areas, of two obis.   The cuffs are greatly enlarged and the obis, finely machine woven, so they do not "shed" and "become raggety" like usual obis.  Wakes up entire train stations, neighborhoods, and hotel lobbies.  

The back of the above jacked showing more clearly, at a distance, the diagonal arrangement of the two obi patterns.   

 This is my Lt. Warf (from Star Trek Next Generation) jacket made of descending rows of many collars, epaulets, and giant cuffs.  The sleeves and body panels are two obis mixed and the descending collars are four obis mixed.   The sleeves are split on the sides with thin silk material sewn at 4 points so bending is easy and does not strain the material (obi material spreads and break easily).   

 This is the back of the above Lt. Warf jacket.  Invisible in it is a large middle triangle of zip fastened material that is removed in summer exposing a thin silk pattern material that makes the jacket comfortable on hot days.  

 This is a gorgeous patterned (not easily seeable unless blown up) black silk kimono shirt (with collar cover, enlarged collar-sleeves-cuffs) but the purpose of the photo is the pants--to show the side pattern using the same two obis combined as in the jacket.  Since these obis are tightly machine woven, larger panels on the legs can succeed without becoming raggety.  

If you magnify this photo you see the gorgeous pattern in this black kimono shirt (with zip front, enlarged sleeves-cuffs-collar as usual).   

The necktie was just a piece of leftover shiny gold that I put over the inside of an ugly tie whose covering material I tore off.  The tie is now  38 years old, worn hundreds of time and, as you can see, looks good as new.  

This is a belt from my favorite belt place--Bling-on-a-Budget.  They have the largest selection but MOST IMPORTANT---this belt I have worn for 3 years now, nearly every day and NOT ONE diamond like sparkly spangle has fallen off.  There are LOTS of other bling-y belts whose sparkles fall off while you unwrap them for a first seeing and every time you wear them the floor has a trail of them (that have fallen off).   

I thought I was huge and made the mistake of ordering XXX size but it turns out American XXX size will wrap elephants (which I am not), so I had to put lots of extra holes in the belts.   More recently I ordered L size and that fits me perfectly.   

Saturday 6Dec14 Richard's Wear

Dear World,

I expect each day to put what I am wearing here.   Why?   That will be visually self evident.   

46 years ago I was on Avenue of the Americas in Manhattan seeking one decent white men's dress shirt to use at Coopers & Lybrand Consultants where I set up AI Circles for Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and other vampire vultures.  I was naive and visited, over a 2 year period, 166 men's tailor shops, never finding a single piece of white cloth there that was not unbelievably UGLY.   

In despair I asked a senior managing director at C&Lyrand where rich people like he bought their shirts--he gave me the phone number of a shop starting at US$600 a shirt, requiring a 3 month visit-prior reservation, where the likes of Robert Redford and Ronald Reagan bought shirts--only one customer at a time allowed in the shop.   I waited my 3 months and appeared, served by barely clothed young things, champagne, as one UGLY piece of cloth (over-priced--what the rich mistake as quality) after another was brought before me.  After an hour of my lousy body language the shorty old owner confronted me "YOU, Mr. Greene, are NOT famous and NOT rich and I never heard of you--how dare you disdain the offerings of my shop".    I was sorry and told him so, sorry that his shop dressed up with clever cuts and fittings the UGLIEST imaginable white cloths from around the world.  Nothing in his shop was fit to wipe my feet on much less wear.   We agreed to never see each other again, and I lost all respect for Robert Redford's fashion sense.  

I went home and lamented to my Broadway dancer girlfriend at the time who laughed and proclaimed "Richard you are such a single minded testesteronicly narrow-minded fool, no thinking being buys material at tailors shops, they buy ......come here, let's go and I will show you".  We threw on coats and she led me to a furniture store, the drapery section, and THERE was NON-UGLY cloth by the tens of meters, 1/6th the per meter price of any tailor shop and HUGELY more beautiful--though about half the items were too scratchy or hard to clean for practical wear (leaving a few hundred other choices, every single one of which was gorgeous, handsome, elegant, with subtle patterns and refinements missing entirely from the 166+snobby1 tailor shops I had visited.   

THE END OF YUK

For winter, thereafter, I bought sofa material and had it fashioned into shirts.  For summer, I bought fine linens and cotton mixes, and laces.   The reaction of clients and bosses at C&Lybrand was immediate---my shirt was dominating rooms and meetings in ways I had never with my mind been able to achieve before.   People are shallow and a gorgeous unique white men's shirt is better (more visible, more elegant, less in need of constant TV ad supports than Rolexes) than a watch or dark, hard to see from a distance, Italian overly made men's suit.   I played this shirt game to the hilt, escalating secretly with collars, cloths, designs, cuffs, 1700s style sleeves, tux front panelling, etc.   When someone higher in rank improved, the next hour, I went home and came back with a vast improvement of my own--crushing the spirit of my opponents and competitors.   It got so bad that people two and three ranks above me asked my fashion advice (I always gave them the name of that over-priced by-appointment-only shop with the nearly-undressed champagne servers.   

AND NOW, TODAY?

Well enough ancient history.  I will soon post photos--inexpert, of my what I am wearing today.   It is self evident---words cannot capture or enhance it.   It either speaks to you or disgusts you.   However, male readers need to beware, because ALL the beautiful women in Tokyo approach me and introduce themselves upon site of these things.   I am not totally clear why--I design entirely to please ME.   That that results in pleasing others is irrelevant and sometimes an annoyance.  I dress the way I do to escape Calvin black, gray, and navy and the conformist lives ensconced inside those drapings.   I dress the way I do because I am NOT YET DEAD.  

 Two greenish obis were combined in a large scale weave design into this rather WARM jacket.  The wide half sleeves are there because they allow fast bold big movements and do not weigh down the arms.   The jacket is designed to be over a suit jacket as shown below.   

This is also two obis combined as large patches on stretch black velvet material--super comfortable.   The sleeves are zip fastened turning the jacket into a vest in summer.  Black velvet is rare in summer as people consider it hot to wear, but in a vest arrangement it is fine in summer.  

Black velvet absorbs light better than any other material making for BLACKER BLACKS that really appeal to women apparently.   Men in black suits no longer are in black suits when I enter the room--a fun phenomenon for certain ego-challenged monkeys.  

   The back of the green jacket above shows clearly the NAGARE flow inter-weaving of two entirely different obis.    This attracts Japanese as they have no fashions of their own that mix obi patterns in this way.   It is a brain thing--the weave attracts because it is complex in a way that the mind CAN soon simplify by spotting the NAGARE flow aspect and the nature of the two obi patterns combined.   

This is the back of the black suit.   It is asymmetric because I personally hate the homes of Louis the 14th of France---a 12 year old's idea of gorgeous, gold sparkle, gold, sparkle--YUK.   The gardens in France also oppress with their mindless endless eye-less symmetries--can French mind think of nothing good enough to fill differently TWO sides of a garden, room, ceiling than repeats of the other side?????

The shapes of the patches are NOT designed.  Research by my students found that truly randomly generated shapes appealed to eyes more than intuited random-ish shapes by a designer.   

 

This is a simple kimono turned into a shirt.  The collar is enlarged as are the cuffs, and the sleeves are enlarged at elbow length.  There are collar covers on the collar so I can wash just the collar not the whole shirt, because collars collect dirt the fastest.  The front is zip front because I hate the bother of buttons and modern zippers are plenty flexible enough.  

The necktie is hated by the Chicago Bulls of the Michael Jordan era---I will explain that in a later posting.   The belt--invisible here---is shining and will be explained in later postings.