Oct
01
Trikoton will convert your voice into a sweater. It’ll look something like this. According to Co.Design: “The technology here is an audio-signal processing program that converts speech into the binary code of a knitting pattern. Then an old mechanical knitting machine — hacked with microcontrollers and small engines to respond directly to computer-generated code — …
Sep
15
Of all the things I had to toss out in the past week, the very easiest to deal with was my clothes. It might be because I didn’t have to toss any of them out. I had already rationalized my closet. It’s been purged of everything except bespoke and work uniforms. Though it will doubtless continue to …
Jan
15
pic nicked from here When a ship is at sea for a long time, a bizarre species of crustacean, known as barnacles, affix themselves to the hull. Although one barnacle does no damage, too many impair the ship’s speed and manoeuvrability. When that happens, the ship must return to port to be cleaned, stripped and …
Jun
19
Shirts are a huge subject. You could devote whole blogs to them and never run out of things to say. I’ll just be discussing the dress shirt. That is, a shirt with collars, cuffs and buttons made from fabrics other than denim. And no doubt, I’ll be covering it badly. Even these limited subjects are …
May
10
Yesterday, on my way to TCAF, I bumped into my new neighbour Anita. Or Geekigirl. I don’t know what I’m supposed to call my real-life peeps online. You know, I never considered “The Grumpy Owl” to be my title until people started calling me that. My name is Ryan Oakley. I only accepted “The Grumpy …
Apr
05
One must use extreme caution when weaving symbolism into their satorialism. Colour, texture and fit form an aesthetic logic divorced from reality. The cufflinks relate to the suit but to nothing outside of it. Not the environment, not your job and not the occasion. Clothing is an exquisite grammar happily lacking the distraction of content. …
Mar
31
Ryan Oakley visits his tailor, Don Fabien Lee, to try on a shirt. Spliced with footage from Allen Gardens. Music by Bach At the Tailor from Ryan Oakley on Vimeo.
Jul
05
It’s been a busy week. Aside from wandering around abandoned warehouses in the dark, flying kites on the beach in the sun, working unusually hard, blogging a bit and conducting my personal life, I’m also within striking distance of completing the first draft of another novel. But, more importantly than any of that, I managed …
Although Ryan Oakley began his career as a simple rake (drunk) he has since become Toronto’s most renowned flaneur (no car) and notorious dandy (overdresses). A misanthropic composer of psycho-geographical fictions (sci-fi), he is also a server of food, a tender of bar and a washer of dishes. While performing all these functions with efficiency and elegance (disdain and malice), he somehow finds the time to publicly criticize friends, strangers and cultural crap.
