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.