Richard's Wear 24Dec2015Thursday

 This is a suit, without removeable sleeves, made from remnant stretch gold fabric that originally was expensive though I bought it from a remnant shop at a small fraction of that original price.   

This whole LOOK fits my spirit---my FUNERAL SONG will be a theme by Kabocha Shyokai--my favorite Chin-don-ya band (walking street band).   

This suit is me---my daily mood since 18 years old---pure unmitigated joy.    The world comes to me daily when my eyes first open, as pure amazement.   Wow---what IS all this world stuff?   Each day I do not know what I am and what "out there" contains for me.   

The suit combines two obis, both with basic black backgrounds.  The stretch fabric is essential as the obi materials are very stiff.  The elaborated up the sleeves cuffs please me greatly--an experiment that worked well.   

 The back is about the same as the front---which is a boring lack of originality for me---but I designed this in 1996, so it is one of my earliest designs.   

Also I got the combination of colors and materials right, I think, so the gold and silver and black and red and other colors are in good proportions to each others.   

The whole outfit SHINES when I walk in sunlight or under street lights on evening streets.   Woe be unto the driver who hits me claiming he failed to see me!!!!

 This, at right, is an even earlier vest, circa 1993, made of very cheap ordinary obi material that came on roles remaindered from a failed factory.   The vertical flow patterns of green with gold down please me even today.  Got this one right too I think.  

 The pants are one obi pattern from waist to foot with the second obi in its center from waist to foot.  This works well on the sides where it does not rub anything and fray.   

Remember, obi materials fray easily as do woven kimonos like uchikake wedding kimonos (printed more recent kimonos are not use-able as the print cracks and flakes off with only a day or two of use).  

OVERALL--this suit is me---a good if not great expression of my basic lifelong daily mood---WOW---should be written on my forehead and car bumper---my basic likelong daily mood--WOW.

 

Richard's Wear Tues22dec15--ho ho ho

This is blue ladies swimwear fabric--stretch and moderately thick--with obi patches from 2 obis on it. The sleeves are removeable turning the jacket in summers into a vest of the circa 1890 sort.   They sleeves are wider and longer than needed--adds a "rich"ish look.   The hat, as usual for me, came with some shit material I threw away and replaced with a 25$ ladies belt (the double rows of sparkles on red leather background).   It makes me look a bit fat due to the scarf and vest underneath.   Actually these days I am leaner than I have been for the previous 30 years---due to teaching grad students from 40 EU nations at Keio.   

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 The suit was designed and made, I think, about 1995.   You can tell because one obi is MUCH better and more beautiful than the other---at that time I did not distinguish, well enough, good from average obi materials.   Also at that time I was breaking mindless symmetry habits in me but here only by material choice not by shapes.   

Most of my suits--not all--have obi material cuffs.  I dislike jackets without cuffs--the material hangs and get caught or eats puddings and knocks over drinks.  I have kimono shirts I wear, also with cuffs, so there is conflict for the same wrist space at times---I choose to live with that.   

The back of this suit is a mindless set of 3 shapes--which manage to dominate attention in crowds---there simply is NO other clothing anywhere with these types of mindless shapes on them, made out of expensive going-out-of-existence weaves (obis in Japan).

The vest is of the same period.  Out of uchikake--wedding kimono.  Notice here the asymmetry from mere material use works better--the left side facing it rather empty and the right side rather crowded with figures.   I like this effect.   

I plan to FIRST SELL such vests someday soon and one of my design principles for vests is patterns on BOTH front and back.  I really resent how ordinary couture designers pattern fronts more than backs---because they have cheap minds and tastes I think.   In cocktail parties, people notice the backs of my vests and jackets LONG before noticing my face and front--inherent in human shyness with strangers.   

The pants leg has triangle shapes down the side, distortedly visible here.   No particular reason for these shapes but this--a large obi triangle at the bottom with the triangle base at the pants leg bottom, has weight and stiffness that makes the pants material swing with each step in a fashion that look rich-ish.   

At places where I dine (snobby choice of word) when I remove my jacket above, revealing this vest, I hear ooo's and ahhhhh's from around the room--people respond viscerally to bright wedding colors and patterns of uchikake kimono material.  

Richard's WEAR 29nov2015 Sunday

 This is what a US$17,000 Japanese obi looks like after 35 years of wear.   It blows away US$7000 Italian conformist cowardly conventional business"man" suits, especially when entering luxury hotel lobbies, restaurants, bars, and rooftop play areas.   LET'S BE CLEAR it attracts young women in numbers and amounts that no 17,000US$ italian grey calvinist suit can match.   

Look at the detail panels at left and below right.   THAT is what you get for 17,000US$.    Try matching that anywhere else on earth outside of Japan.  Every EVERY time I go to China wearing this suit, at least half a dozen rich guys or their wives/girlfriends come up to me asking the PRICE and "where to get".

 This suit is quite old---25 to 27 year old.   The background material is women's swimwear---stretch shining black fabric, very very comfortable.  It too has stood the test of time the last 35 years well.  

I have four or five such black obi suits and they all blow away Italian conformist Calvinist competition suits.   Even the ones with US$1000 obis on them.  

This suit was old therefore not really designed by me at all.  I made the obi patch tapered at my waiste as I was larger then and needed the optical illusion of slimness, which this suit achieves.  Nowadays I am slim and the effect is less needed.   

Notice the irritating symmetry of the suit---I HATE that--looks cheap to me---like tacky 7000US$ Italian ego packages.  

 Of course the suit looks more impressive without a dry shriveled prune--me--inside!!!

If ONLY I had avoided left right up down symmetry!!!!

It is these days extremely hard to come across obis of this quality except from old ladies in the train who notice what I wear and who contact me about donating their obis when they pass away---this happens several times a year.  

To be fair---there is a good bit of muscle under the suit in thiese photos, enhancing the shaped effects of the jacket.   I bench press 150 kilograms these days and that helps fill out the jacket top.   Another reason that using stretch fabric is good.  

Richard's WEAR 27NOV2015 Friday

 Not sure but this may be my very first self-designed suit, done about 1984 what at the Univ. of Michigan.  It is NOT really a design at all---just dumb obvious moves.  I had ONLY one idea---stop wearing clothes made out of the world's shittiest quality fabrics (Gap, Saks 5th Avenue, Versachi, etc.).  

So, I chose as background material stretch gold shining material (metallic shine causes itches so the ratio of metallic to stretch etc thread is key to comfort--in this case 1 to 11).  I chose for accent an expensive Japanese uchikake wedding kimono 

 The PARTICULAR wedding kimono that I chose is almost a black background, so at any rate a dark background, which at the time was unusual.   I needed a contrast with the somewhat  too bright gold stretch background fabric.  

The cut of the accent pieces is BORING--lacking all imagination, symmetrical, utterly without merit.  The portions of the suit, however, occupied with the uchikake material are wisely chosen to prevent fraying and rapid wear---uchikakes are of 2 sorts, thick prints that chip off within 2 or 3 days of wearing, or woven fabric of loose large stitch sizes that catch on everything and fray all days long so after a few days of wear you look like a shaggy dog.   

This uchikake is the latter so it is vital that all patches of it are in places not rubbed against anything unmooth.   

The suit is old but since it is stretch and the gold background fabric breathes nicely---it is very comfortable in active wear--you can play baseball with it, tho not football.   

I find that it has POWER for catching eyes and HOLDING eyes long times---not due to the stupid design elements by me as a beginner here, but due simply to the DESIGN OF THE UCHIKAKE fabric large patches of which are made visible here.   There is a visceral Japanese appreciation of their own design traditions and they cannot help themselves liking the patches of uchikake which are quite large and visible here.  

I LIKED THIS SUIT (almost 40 years ago) because I am so sick of men trying to look Calvinist, self important, strutting little monkeys----PARADING HORMONES---yuk, have they no sense?    

There never has been an important man unless you are very sick in a hospital with a competent physician in a nation with a decent elite--like France--where national healthcare works.   

So all other men, trying to LOOK important---come across as hormone drenched buffoons and wear 7000$ BORING UGLY Italian suits--strutting like good Calvinists.  When I enter luxury hotel doors wearing my 30+ year old undesigned bad design suits, of great materials, all the young girls in the entourage of the 7000$ Italian suited strutting executive eye me and break off to meet me--irritating the hormones of the shrunken brain executive in the stupid Italian suit.   God's little justices!!!!

Richard's Wear Wed25Nov2015

This is stretch lace gold fabric with ONE obi patched on it.   It is VERY comfortable because breathing lace and stretch.   The sleeves are longer than needed and wider than needed because that extra cloth makes of a luxurious look given how usual cheapo fashions (all sold ones) minimize cloth expense for profits.   

 The back of the jacket is not symmetric, so I can tolerate it (I hate symmetry--Versailles! YUK).   I do NOT like this particular pattern tho.  

This is the back of ANOTHER outer jacket (the day was cold today).  It is my Lt. Warf (Star Trek Next Generation) line of outer jackets.   The triangle in the back is zip remove-able so in summer a thin breathing material is revealed making the jacket cool then.  The pattern on that triangle is a Sierpenski Sieve fractal.   

This is the front of the outer jacket at left--notice the cascade of collar shapes down both sides of the front.   These are patches from several obis not one.  

At right is the pants which are un-adorned in this old suit design.  

COMING in 2 or 3 weeks--my Xmas present to myself---are seven new suits, my best designs yet.   The problem is---the design can be great but the total effect ruined by material pattern and color choice.   So the best designs coming I arranged to have two suits for, out of different sorts of material combination---so perhaps ONE would be a hit.   I may have to make those coming designs again with a 3rd material combo to make visually evident the quality in the design itself.  We will see.   The problem in using great materials is any design element OTHER than the material choice often detracts from the power in the material itself.   So the more complex my designs the LESS impressive the materials should be.   I have a hard time toning down the materials I choose to use when the design is by itself great--a fault I will still have to work more to overcome.    BOTH the suit and the outer jacket today, however, we well done from THIS perspective--the material does not counteract the design complexity and vice versa.   I chose somewhat BORING materials for both and let the design complexity speak via boring materials.  

Richard's Wear 17 Nov 2015 Tuesday

This goofy looking person is me.   This suit is wildly popular in Shinyurigaoka, the expensive suburb of Tokyo where I live.   I get stopped every single day wearing it by curious admiring girls and ladies.  Women LOVE men in black, reminds them the men will soon die and leave behind money to spend freely (a hypothesis).   

This suit is OLD, designed in 1996 when I was into short bolero jackets with zip removeable sleeves, and combining two thin flexible metallic obis in a narrowing design, wide at shoulder and narrow at waiste (I was 15 kilograms fat then and needed to look less pumpkin-like).   I add a cowgirl belt with bejeweled shiny stuff all over it--again admired by men in Japan everywhere I go.   

The hat is my usual deal--cheapie from the web with the crap band thrown away and a female belt from a local store for 12 dollars, added instead. The combination LOOKS rich because everyone accepts the crap that hat manufacturers put around hats to make money.   I do NOT wear any low quality cloths--a basic principle.  

The jacket back shows clearly the "make the waiste look smaller" stategy at work, but I like the assymetry of the central strip.   

The trousers have a truly random design, made by a little program I wrote, as we found that true random shapes catch eyes first and hold eyes longest compared to pseudo random shaped made by humans trying for a "random look".   

Something in the brain likes true random mixtures of shapes.  

There are about 110 suit designs that I did AFTER this one, including SIX amazing ones coming in a few weeks.   I have learned mostly because I do two sets of designs a year so I have five months to wear each set and get feedback.   I get to try them out with chambers of commerce, sexually hot young ladies, rich elders in my suburb, media and TV personaities and fashion designers at special cafes in fashion districts of Omotesando Harajuku.   The results are a sold body of "what works" and "what no one has ever seen before" on a life person--that populates my imaginings of what NEXT to invent and try and test.   

12 October 2015 NOT DEAD YET-Fashions by Richard Monday

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Above and right and below is a suit I designed 30 years ago, out of Uchikake material---I had only one method--STOP wearing crap made of the world's ugliest materials from manufacturers and designers.   I would ONLY wear clothes made of wonderful materials--in this case:
1) stretch thin nylon polyester---breathes stretches comfortable
2) uchikake wedding kimono---weave on print--nothing like it elsewhere--yellow such kimonos are rare, yellow with red and gold and purple decor even rarer.

 This suit has NO FEATURES---I was beginning and all I knew was stupid Western symmetry and such. The ONLY good thing is great materials---stretch athletic breathe-ables with uchikake kimono patches.  Everything else about this suit disgusts me---yet the suit as a whole is very comfortable and showy and lovely to wear---the standards of the world from couture houses are sooooooooooo verrrrrrrrrry low.


A dog turd would design better stuff--just do google search for French Waistecoats circa 1700, 1750, 1800 and seek the ladies dresses then------fantastic amounts and types of sewing that blow away the "easy" prints that Italy has fallen so venally in love with.

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Richard's Wear 7 May 15 Thurs

 This is a suit I made about 15 years ago of stretch 
light weight (for summer) burgandy material with two obi patterns of patches.   It is VERY comfortable in mid-spring-mid-summer weather.  The sleeves are remove-able and the front (if you blow the photo up) is open not overlapping, which lets the whole jacket breathe in hot weather--a BIG difference from usual trite men's jacket designs by ALL the famous un-imaginative brands that TV apes.  

The shirt inside is gorgeous kimono material with a subtle pattern and wonderful light reflectance.   I have exaggeratedly large collar and cuffs on it and overly long sleeves as extra sleeve length is perceived by folks as "rich looking".   The collar is detachable (I have two others for this shirt) so I usually wash only the collar once every 3 to 5 years (I have 600 suits and shirts so I do not wear anything more than a day or two.  

The leg uses patches from the same two obis but randomly shaped (not pseudo-randomly shaped).  Our research found true random shapes attract eyes best and longest.   The back is a pseudo random shape, however, that out-tested true random ones we generated---we have NO idea why this works best.   From a distance it is clear NO designer item of clothing, male or female, in the world has this combination of shapes and obi patch patterns so UNIQUENESS or an EYE MYSTERY is generated from 5 or more meters away.   

The hat is a normal cheap looking crap hat with the shitty band manufacturers put on it thrown away and a ladies belt used as replacement = commonsense.   NOTHING from a manufacturer is not terribly ugly.    You HAVE TO WEAR IT to appreciate how much BETTER it feels in hot weather than any other kind of material out there.   Stretch, very thin, open front, sleeveless---this is VERY comfortable to wear today!!!   Probably I will wear it a few more days this week.   I have blue one to replace it with--when eyes get tired of burgundy.   

The necktie--as all my neckties--was HATED by the Chicago Bulls of the Michael Jordan era---that is, I bought it at the 2 shops on Roosevelt Road frequented by Michael Jordan (where his elegant suits came from) DURING their annual August sale (whatever for a year no one bought was marked down to 1/3 or less usual sky high prices.   

I looked at 22,000 neckties all over the internet a year or so ago and could find NOTHING like the pattern on this and my other Hated by Chicago Bulls neckties.   History does NOT repeat itself in neckties so much then.  

Richard's Wear 17April15Fri AM & PM

I wore two of my new 1750 circa French waistecoat suits today.   They are STRANGE---I admit, but they WORK--dominating eyes in any room I enter and holding attention.   PLUS the right sort of very ELEGANT ladies, young and sleek, stop and talk.   The suits are complicated and therefore I should have worn simpler shirts with them---but I will learn in coming days.   

 The colorful shirt detracts from the colorful suit---too much too much-ness.  Many of you are surprised that I have a top on my head--having never actually seen it before due to the hats I like and wear nearly all the time.  So here is my head---it HAS a top!!!

 The back of the suit is ridiculous---(emphemizing perhaps).   I dislike it intensely.   But with a darker shirt--dark blue at lead--the effect is better.   

  The shirt by itself is gorgeous.

 This is a second, purely purple suit--purpley purple.   It really photographs as a deep color and it has deep deep coloring.   Gorgoues

This is a design feature I forgot I had---the fake vest fastener part is REMOVEABLE = global warming may need it removed, and when removed it leaves a lovely waistecoat curve of two jacket sides that do not meet.  

Richard's Wear 15April15wed actual

This, unlike previous posts for the most part, is a recent design, done New Year's 2014-15 about four months ago.   I cannot, in all honesty, remember what I was thinking when I did it.   

Actually, all the kimonos and obis used are ones I dislike and if I am right, I was trying to do something more interesting than throwing them all away.  IF I COULD make something out of them, worth wearing, not necessarily grand or wonderful, then as long as it was a bit better than sheer trash, I could get value out of designing them.  

I ended up getting TEN of these today from Vietnam. First, my producer ladies did a PERFECT job of fit and finish---every slightest suggestion was perfectly interpreted and executed.  Amazing. 

 Second, since the materials were rather boring, the worst in my furugi collections, I spiffed up the other non-material design elements.  When I have great kimono and obi materials, no need for fancy smancy shapes.  But here, I felt the need for embellishment, a la the adolescent crap that Louis the 14th at Versailles mistook for beauty---glitz and more glitz, symmetry and more symmetry, a 12 year old's idea of beauty--really does make me vomit.   

So the jacket above is toward that vomit-genre of design pioneered by stupid genetically deficient kings of France a couple of hundreds years ago.   Notice the Star Trek Next Generation Lt. Warf shoulder extensions!   Nicely outre!!!!   Notice the stained glass curved section on the lower back---what in the world is THAT?   

This suit is particularly disturbed by the stupid kimono patterns here and there on it----rather unfortunately, junking up what might have been a clean design. FORTUNATELY the other 9 suits are without that crap.

The suit it VERY comfortable to wear and perfectly shaped, fitted, and sized.   I wore it to Omotesando today and it was so powerfully confusing that people did not know how to react.   I imagine that like the initial reaction to Picasso's Des'moiselles D'avignon (self flattering lie therefore).   

The vest in front is NOT a real vest.  The buttons do not fasten anything--they are there to distract from how ugly my face is.   The vest is joined in the center with a gold zipper--very convenient.   The vest-like things attach just inside the lapels on either side.  When it gets warm I just leave it all open, unzipped.  It is sleeveless because I assure you all that not one sleeve will be left on earth by 2030.   It will be too hot everywhere all the time.   The entire suit is all silk---and Japanese silk if by far the most lasting and lovely in Asia.   Too bad the people who make it are so stubborn and suicidally bent on old robes and Rome.   Got their heads in some self worship our lovely past spot and cannot see the trees.   Idiots.    Nice for me---I can buy unmatchable materials nowhere else available on earth and one by one no longer being made at all.   Tomorrow I will wear a better one of these TEN suits---and you will see the difference.     

Richard's Wear 15April15 Wed

 This is a 35 year old suit--one of my very first.   It combines two obis---one a black silver pattern the other an orange and chartreuse pattern.  The shapes down the pants leg are TRUE RANDOM, computer made random curves intersected at random displacements and angles.   We found that TRUE RANDOM shapes catch attention first when competing with pseudo random curves drawn by humans and with non-random shapes.  The brain likes a bit of noise it appears.  

 This is the back of the jacket (duh) and has a V shape--at the time I was looking for ways to make my fat-ness less prominent.  Last year I lost 24 kilograms and now a year later I am still slowly losing weight but 18 kilograms less than my max as I gained some from weight-lifting.   (Bench press 140 kilograms on good days).   The V effectively all look slimmer than they are.   I like the slight dis-symmetry of it.  

This is the front of the jacket.  NOTE the V shape again for the same purpose, tho now unneeded.  The shirt is lady's swimwear---stretch chartreuse--one of my favorite shirt materials.  I had six made 30 years ago and 3 are still in their original packaging waiting to be used.  I found you cannot rub this material while washing--you have to soak it without friction the way you treat delicate wools in the same soaps as wools.  Stretch shirts like this that breathe are super comfortable.  The necktie was hated by the Chicago Bulls of the Michael Jordan era, as were all my neckties.  Heaven help me if I tried to get them again--I looked thru 25,000 neckties pages on the web a few years ago and found nothing that was not perfectly PERFECTLY AWFUL---god help us all if the rest of our civilization is headed where our neckties have arrived.