GETTING SERIOUS---Richard's Wear 10jan2016Sun

 GETTING SERIOUS---this is a serious suit as far as I am concerned.   I call it my Lt. Warf (Star Trek Next Generation) suit--Klingonesque.   I like just about everything about it.  The vest is not a real vest, it comes out in summer and attaches just behind the lapels.   The two rows of buttons on it have no real function.   Two obis furnished the patches as epaulettes and central back column below.  

Notice the stained glass experiment bottom right of the jacket back---I will as said in an earlier post--make entire jackets next out of this stained glass effect.  

 The pink color has it own merits, especially when worn by men.   It produces a deep visceral reaction in Japan--men are not supposed to wear pink---a violation, though no one in his right mind would confuse me with an effeminate male--my nastiness shows thru all to often and powerfully (in stupid costly ways).  

Personally I like irredescent pinks like the silk kimono material that comprises this suit.   I like pink obi on pink kimono background--thank goodness in this suit I escaped my old bugaboo of choosing hopelessly ugly giant contrast materials.  

 Some of course see pink as suggestive of the color of the female genital organ when spread open--but it is also the color of the male organ to a lesser degree.   But you have to be pretty bent out of sexual shape to bother  with such associations.  The color is striking, lively, buoyant and fun to see and to wear.   To hell with naysayers and cowards of all sorts.   Trying to please middle classers and upper class couture copycats is a waste of life.   The rich as simply too cocaine drenched to think straight and the middle class spends so much time grovelling they cannot avoid diseases foisted on them by American food companies. 

 The shirt at right is SOFA material---my old Manhattan girlfriend's idea of buying clothing materials ONLY from furniture stores--shirt material from drapery sections and sofa (in winter) sections.   If you expand the photo in size you see the striated gold braiding under the purple and slight pink floural pattern.   Thick and warm it is not metallic on skin and not uncomfortable to wear.  I bench press 140 kilograms nightly so moving in sofa material shirts does not tax my muscles much.

I have a dozen of these, all unworn as yet---I will try to get to them but last night I reorganized a bit my room and found 52 unworn as yet suits I will have to try to give a run to this year.

The neck tie I bought 22 years ago in Hankyu Takarazuka--it is tiny, shrunken, sized for Japanese after WWII.   So I have to tie it strangely as one strand not two layered.  

This is one of 3 neckties I have that are NOT hated by the Chicago Bulls basketball team of the Michael Jordan era.

I think I posted on Facebook and/or linkedin the 7 new suit designs coming a week from now from Vietnam.   They are new, experiments, and we will see--by wearing and observing reactions--which designs are great.  I have made this first bunch out of obis and kimonos I do NOT like much---no willing to waste top flight materials on experimental designs.  SO FOR THE DESIGNS THAT WORK OUT I will quickly make several suits of the same design out of SPLENDID materials I have been collecting each month from FURUGI fairs near my train station.     

Richard's Wear 8jan2016friday A RECENT DESIGN

This is a recent design unlike most I have posted thus far.  This design was done 2 years ago, after blending a few dozen Napoleonic era waist-coat images google search turned up.   The vest like middle of the jacket is NOT a true vest but attachments under the lapels.  They are remove-able in summer, leaving long lapels, each of a different obi pattern, that do NOT meet in the middle--staying open for global warming futures.

This was a design entirely new to me and I never use GOOD obis and GOOD kimonos when first doing a design.  Hence the stupid designs on otherwise great deep rich purple kimono material.  Future versions will use better kimonos without such fluff.   

Nevertheless, this design--over-busy as it is--is an effect I wanted to wear and thereby test.  Again, reactions surprised me---Tokyo-ites came up to me all day today to examine, praise, ask about this mess.

In my station train station where 2000 to 4000 people an hour shuffle thru, 45 seconds walk from my condo, all day long--I noticed as all those thousands noticed, the bright deep rich purple and shocking da-glo chartreuse shirt combo of this outfit.  All others of those thousands in the station were various degrees of gray and black---as that sort of coloring allows the worlds poorest people to make the world's cheapest materials enabling the world's most venal designers to make profits from turning out gray black dark depressing shitty looking junk = what everyone in the world other than me wears everyday.  

 It is not  that I am as arrogant as I appear (I am MORE arrogant than I appear).  Rather it is that decades ago i found it FUN to try designs out and see reactions myself and soon bounded above and beyond mass producers and couture houses.  MOST of my experiments are horrid---things others flee from and that I myself shrink spiritually to fill.   

The back of this jacket, has a central column ending in an asymmetric stained glass section of several patches from unrelated obis.  

I was adding the stained glass section to these jackets NOT for this design but to test out the stained glass effect visually myself.   

I will be making a suit set in 2016 that is nearly ALL stained glass obi sections at odd shapes and colors and angles.  The eye LIKES true randomness in any dimension.  

16 Jan my producer in Vietnam sends me 7 new suit designs (9 suits)--all made with inferior kimonos and obis as the designs, all 7 of them, are entirely new to this world.   I cannot wait to see which of them works well even with inferior materials---such designs I will quickly make out of far better obis and kimonos I have been collecting throughout 2014 and 2015.  

I wear these particular suit designs (I have 9 of them) to ACCJ, American Chamber of Commerce Meetings in Tokyo.   They fit well there  as the LIVES of American businessmen in Asia are enormously more interesting than of Americans in America.    So my outfits merely interest or attract people, with only Americans visiting Japan briefly from American being discomfitted and hurling abuse (outre designs make them uncomfortable being alive).   Little men cannot stand differences---differences terrify little men.   

5jan2016tuesday Richard's Wear

 I hate this suit and the kimono material it is made from.   The stupid flowers, the stupid even distribution of them everywhere, the stupid almost symmetry of the pattern, the stupid primary school colors.  THIS is a very HATE-ABLE suit.  

However, the people of Tokyo, for some reason that escapes me completely, LIKE this suit.  All day today strangers approached me in English and complimented me on the suit, asking where I got it and such questions.  WHAT IS WRONG with everybody???????

 This is the back of the suit-----surprise surprise---it is as ugly in every respect as the front is.   Looks like I have been sprayed with some sort of nursrey school flower spray.

This is the sleeve of the kimono black shirt under the suit jacket.   If you click in the photo and get a bigger version of it, you can see the lovely patterning in black, that makes black kimono silk shirts so very much more elegant than anything Europe makes at any price.   

EU---YUK YUK YUK---cheap bad taste by FAMOUS NAMES---the bugaboo of all tasteless rich people!!!1

This, below, is me at Ootoya, a restaurant I eat at every single night, that, dropped by BAD cholesterol from 171 to 111 for 3 months in a row now.   Better THAN STATINS by far.   NO side effects.  

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!!!!