Continue reading »]]> 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 — spits out the clothing.”

They can use any audio signal – a bit of a song you like, maybe the bark of your dog or mewing of your cat and translate it into cloth.   Hating clothing that has symbols or words, believing matters of the cloth are best limited to the language of color, texture and fit, while slogans are more belong on signs, I like the subtly of this idea.    It adds a new level of code to clothing.

I wonder how long before one could have the entirety of Homer or Ray Bradbury’s “The Illustrated Man” encoded into a suit, worn with a necktie built from the complete Oscar Wilde.  And could future societies find these artifacts, figure them out and play them like records?  One certainly hopes so.  I would like socks made from Shakespeare and underwear by De Sade.

Continue reading »]]>

What I want: What I got.

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 grow, it will do so along along a more or less determined path: New clothing from my tailor will be added, work-wear and intimates will be replaced and beyond that – nothing.  This method has served me well.

It also speaks to my purge methodology.

When throwing things out, the balance must be struck between potential use and concrete use.  Will you really someday need that thing?  That heater is a keeper because, while currently unemployed, will be necessary in the inevitable winter.  That collection of Archie books, though I might enjoy reading them again, must go because the odds are too high that I might not.  Every item in the world has a potential use.  What must be measured is the probability of its actual use and how valuable it will be when used.

For example, the probability of ever needing an emergency flashlight is fairly low but, should that occasion arise, it is invaluable.

A section of Bunny Roger's closet. He never quite fit within it.

I tossed all my suits other than the really good ones because I had enough good ones to never need the bad ones for anything other than work.  Aside from this, the ad ones represented too many potentialities.  What slacks go with what shirt?  What jacket with those?    And so forth.  Each item represented a series of decisions about possible combinations and each item required that a certain amount of unused clothing exist just to expand the possibilities that these decisions were based upon.  This meant that each of those suits represented a negative value.  For each one I wore, there remained a greater amount of potential suits going unworn and taking up space.  Space was/is a more valuable commodity.

Now, I enjoy a situation where the concrete use far outweighs the potential of any outfit, especially when the major concern –space– is considered.  Each of my suits is a complete piece and the only potentialities are shirts, ties, cufflinks, socks and shoes.  None of these require much storage space.  In terms of time, all of these are required for, at most, four days a week.  My work clothes, which are purely concrete, take up the other three.  That almost half-week of simplicity gives me a surplus best employed when dressing for pleasure.

The only loss is one of time.  I have to do laundry more often but this is offset by a decrease in weight while doing so, an increase in clarity about when to do it and a reduction in load size.

Beyond these metrics, the principle is that quantity is not the same thing as quality.  The art of all things, including that of dressing, is not formed by the endless multiplication of possible outcomes but by the economical use of the concrete.  If a rifle appears over the mantle in the first act, it must be fired in the third. The outcome must always be unexpected but inevitable.   The tension should never lie in whether the rifle will be fired but in who will fire it and at who and for what reasons: considerations also formed by the economic use of the concrete.

This is what makes things make sense.

It is why we are unsatisfied by art without restriction, by sudden plot twists, by the last minute introduction of the unforeseeable (not the unforeseen) into any story and characters that suddenly act very differently from what we’ve come to expect.  These are all cheap tricks.  In writing, it’s the realm of the hack rather than the author, and in that of dressing, that of the fop rather than the dandy.

Life requires a certain degree of artistry.  This does not mean one should own a lot of funny hats.  It means that one must strive towards an elevated simplicity.  Also, that effort is required and choices are mandatory.   It is, of course, excusable to make errors, consume more than what you need and to make the error of consuming more than what you need.  Like brainstorming and first drafts, the abundance of ideas teaches one what works and what does not.  Mistakes are an important part of the process and one should never attempt to live without them.  One should certainly buy and wear a few funny hats but, in doing so, remember that one probably did not intend to become a collector of them.  Consumption should serve a purpose beyond itself.

Just as one’s closet should not be judged by the amount of clothing within it, a novel judged by the amount of words it contains or a painting by the size of the canvass, one’s life should not be a matter of how much they have done or how long they have lived but of what use they have made of it.  As Jack London once said: “The proper function of man is to live, not exist. I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them.  I shall use my time.”   This attitude should also be taken to the things in it.

Continue reading »]]> 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 fixed.

As creatures set afloat in a sea of commerce, we too gather many little barnacles.  Passively acquired, protected by a rock hard shell of psychological attachment and glued to our lives by a mixture of laziness, passivity and fear, these creatures slow us down, stop us from moving and must be removed.

At times, we humans too must return to port.

pic nicked from here

Because of my mode of dress, my closet is perhaps more susceptible to barnacles than most.  Each suit, after all, requires a certain amount of supporting clothing.  Shirts, ties, various accessories and accoutrements.  When purchasing these, it’s quite common to find something else to buy.   And most of that is never actually used though it remains because one day, maybe, I’ll need it.

One day, maybe.

Well, one day maybe never comes.

I have tried, every spring, to strip off the barnacles but to leave the hull intact. And this has met with varying degrees of success.  Yet, not matter how through I am, every winter I find myself overwhelmed by clothes I never wear.  They clog up my closet, lay strewn over my floor, impair my speed and manoeuvrability while causing needless complication when getting dressed.  It’s a minor but constant psychic strain.

An utterly unnecessary one.

Other than my bespoke suits, I always wear the same few suits to work.  To introduce variance to these work clothes, I have tried adding.  More shirts, a variety of sweaters, different ties, even more shirts.  It has not worked.  The drag on my life is increased.  I cannot acquire my way out of this mess.  After all, I acquired my way into it.

Drastic measures are called for.

And drastic measures have been taken.

Today and yesterday I gathered every single item of clothing I own, other than underwear, socks, ties and bespoke, and bagged it.  It’s all in the garbage.

I have replaced all of that with three pairs of navy blue work pants and three pairs of navy blue work shirts from BIG B WORKWEAR.  I work three shifts a week.

These are now my work clothes.

When I’m not working, I own enough bespoke to be exclusively clad in that.

The entire middle of my closet has been removed.  No matter my sentimental attachment to any item, it has gone.  No matter how much money I once spent on it, it is now garbage.  No matter how much I once liked it, I murdered the fucker.

Purges are a ruthless business.

Sentimentality is deadly.

And I have been here before.  Every so often I find my progress impeded by old ideas, old items and old things.  I return to port and tear the ship up.  Rebuild it and start again.  There has been many Ryans over the years.  Punk, drunk and the one that you have gotten to know here.  The fellow who exclusively wears suits.

But that was never meant as the complete final version.

If you thought that, you haven’t really been listening to a word.

I’ve always been a quality over quantity sort of person.  But constricted as I am by limited finances and desirous of fine suits, I have had to acquire a great deal of not so fine suits.  Over time, as planned, my one-time front line of suits has become my bottom end work clothes.  I simply did not have the money to have both suits and work clothes.   I needed to do a sort of double duty.  Buy a suit, replace it with a better one and turn that old one over to the job.    Any money spent exclusively on work attire took away from this replacing of the top end.  It slowed me.

pic nicked from here

Over time, that bottom end decayed through wear and tear.  As they say in the maritime business, it became biofouled.  Quite literally, in some cases, frayed around the collar.  They needed to be replaced; not as suits but as work clothes.

I could have bought other suits but that would have required a great deal of effort and money spent in an impractical pursuit.  A lot of time searching through second-hand shops. And just to have work clothes.  It is much better to simply buy work clothes that match my aesthetic of efficiency tempered with biology.

Once upon a time, when interviewed about my sense of style I said: “Function is beautiful and beauty is functional.” These are words I stand by.

I never wanted to be that fellow who wears suits.  Never wanted to be your dandy or your fop.  What I wanted was some beautiful suits and to find a sort of timelessness within them. That I had to constantly wear suits, was not a matter of taste but one of finances.  It was a part of a progress to a life more beholden to quality than to quantity.  Having a lot of suits is no article of pride.

I bought bespoke suits because they would lead to a greater efficiency in my closet.  This was my ten year plan and they have served this purpose admirably.  I can now honestly say that my collection of suits are about the best that my money can buy.  My wardrobe can still be increased [it will be: much more slowly] but it can only be improved on with a series of details invisible to even to myself.

To do that, I would have to be a millionaire.  I’m not a millionaire.  I’m not any sort of aire.

Lacking the money for a direct approach to the problem of making my bespoke suits better, I have used a trick that I learned in writing.

It sometimes appears that there’s a problem with a chapter when there is no problem with that chapter.  The problem is in a different place.  In another chapter.  And that’s what needs to be changed.

I can make my bespoke look better by not constantly wearing suits.  Rather than being an improvement on something that, to the uneducated eye, probably all looks the same anyway, it will be a stark contrast with BIG B WORKWEAR.

But not too stark of a contrast.  At opposite ends of the spectrum, we often find more similarities than differences.  To me, this workwear is simply another example of a suit.  Though lacking the bio-sartorial functions of a suit and tie, it is recommended by being stripped down to even greater simplicity.

To make a very old and oft wrong prediction, jumpsuits are the way of the future.

The whole history of menswear teaches that today’s ultra-simple work or sports wear is tomorrow’s formal clothing.  This was the insight of the lionized though misunderstood Beau Brummel.  Though extravagant by today’s standards, his clothing was, by the standards of the Regency, shockingly simple.  He understood better than most that the past is little more than a collection of barnacles.

So perhaps the B in BIG B WORKWEAR stands for BEAU.  Perhaps it stands for BROTHER.  But one thing it does not stand for is BARNACLE.  It’s the future.

Get used to it.

Continue reading »]]>

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 huge.  Each has vast amounts of subcategories, rules, exceptions to those rules, rules about those exceptions and so forth.  Most of this, I’ll be unable to touch upon.

Instead, I’m  going to attempt the most basic sort of guide.  The fundamental knowledge that can always be referenced  in times of confusion.  And if you’re not confused about your shirt, you’re not paying attention.

The first thing to understand is that the shirt is one of the most important items of clothing.  A good shirt can carry a bad suit while a bad shirt can wreck a good suit.   But how do you tell what a good shirt is?

As always, fit is of paramount importance.  There is a rumour that dress shirts are uncomfortable.  The people who started that rumour have never worn a shirt that fits.  Under no circumstances should the collar be choking you.  It should feel nice around your neck.  If you have to unbutton your collar to feel comfortable, you really need a new shirt.  That one was meant for someone else.  A well fitted dress shirt is comfortable enough to sleep in.

When I see that iconic image of a man after a hard day’s work, dragging himself home, his shoulders slouching as trudges onto the subway, lugging his leather lunch-box with his top buttons undone and his tie hanging loosely about his neck, I immediately know why he is working so hard:  He’s saving up for a shirt that actually fits.

The only reason to ever undo your top button and loosen your tie is because you’re drunk.  Then you should do it.  But not immediately.  Wait until you’re drunk enough to have a good stagger and an unfocused but hostile glare.   You should also have a mild tilt.  In that case, an unbuttoned shirt and loose tie is just what the doctor ordered.

It should not signal relaxation or exhaustion as much as debauched and unbalanced menace.  An exception to this being an epic hangover.  In that case, you might just be in too much pain to finish buttoning your shirt.

If you wish to signal relaxation, there are better ways to do it.  You can unbutton your jacket or remove it.  But what must be remembered is that the shirt is an undergarment.  At most times, in most circumstances, the only visible parts should be the collar, the cuffs and part of the chest.

Outside of working, with its considerations dictated by practicality, you should only show more  shirt when you’re either in the the company of people who have seen you in your underwear or people you wish to see in theirs. And don’t underestimate the power of formality and the effect its relaxation can have on even the most unsubtle mind.

Never showing much increases the effect of even showing a little.   If you’re with a lady who has never seen the arms of your shirt, showing them sends a clear message.  Other men may have to jump through hoops, oil up their chest and do a little dance to get the same effect.  Not us.  Simply removing our jacket with a knowing look will either cause her to get a lot more or a lot less  comfortable.  What you prefer is, of course, between y’all.

But because most of the shirt is at most times invisible, it’s vitally important to concentrate on the parts that are seen by the public.  Here follows a strange but apt comparison.

Women recently had a fad where their pants were pulled quite low and their underwear quite high.  This made some of their underwear visible to the public.  The male shirt is similar exercise in provocation.  In principle, it is exactly the same.  The main and, perhaps, only difference is that we’ve all had time to get used to seeing male undergarments.  They’ve lost their ability to shock and titillate the public.

But we’d do well to remember the fundamentals.

Just as those women who wore those pants were doubtless quite careful about what panties they chose to wear, men must be quite careful about their shirts and, in particular, the cuffs’ exposure to the public gaze.  Showing too much cuff is like showing too much thong.  Show none and you might as well be a Victorian Amish Puritan.  There is delicate balance between being seen as a a slut or a prude.

The exact right amount is an function of the suit itself, the circumstances it’s worn in and the mind of the person wearing it.  What is clear, however, is that some cuff should always be visible.  I like to be able to show off my cufflinks without rubbing them in anyone’s face.  (There will be more on cufflinks later this week.)

The collar, however, conveys the exact opposite impression than the daring exposure of one’s wrist panties.  Because the neck is such a vulnerable and sensitive area, the higher the collar the greater the modesty and defensiveness of the person wearing it.  The higher the collar the greater the reservations.

It’s no accident that priests are known for their distinctive  collar.

But then there is an effect akin to the uncanny valley.  The raising of a shirt’s collar only looks modest up to a point.  After that point is crossed, it becomes a parody of modesty.   The defence has become so impenetrable that it is no longer a defensive weapon at all but, rather, highly offensive.  It bluntly says: “Go fuck yourself, you cannot even dream of touching my neck.”   I have come to favour a high collar.

I would only recommend an immodestly high collar to those people who have caused other people to want to slit their throat and take that as a point of pride.   Men like Don Cherry and Karl Lagerfeld, both like high collars and both, in their own ways, exemplify the idea of: “Fuck you – I’m untouchable.”

Last but not least is shirt colour.  There is a whole world of colours and combinations to choose from.  The English, much like with their socks, like a bright shirt with a conservative suit.  The Italians prefer a plain shirt.  And the French are possessed by their own genius.  Who cares what Germans wear?

The standards in shirt colour are white, blue and pink.  So most shirts experiment with combinations of these and patterns within them.  But, for the adventurous soul, there is whole world of options to choose from.

The idea is usually contrast.  With loud suits one wears quiet shirts and vice versa.  But there are so many exceptions to this basic rule that it’s insensible to take it too seriously.  Your eye will judge.

The main thing is that your shirt does not choke you, that it’s well constructed and that you show the correct amount of cuff while expressing your modesty –or lack thereof– in the collar.  Abide by that and invent your own rules.

Continue reading »]]> 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 Owl” as a personal designation when I realized how pointless the fight was.  Like “dandy”, it’s just what people wanted to call me.  I couldn’t stop them. So I just accepted it then incorporated it into my life.  I’ve been called worse things by better people.

Anyway, I met Anita in the street and, having different destinations, we quickly parted ways.  Met again on the subway where she snapped this pic of my shirt and tie with some telephone thingamajig.

I like the picture.  Mainly because it doesn’t contain the distraction of my head.

Continue reading »]]>

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.

I do not believe in appropriate dress.  Only in varying degrees of logical dress.

Where there is an isomorphism between cloth and reality, I believe it should always go to our biological roots rather than our cultural surroundings.  No matter what it is, anything that reinterprets that connection might succeed.  Anything that fails that test will simply fail.

Perhaps this is due to some aspect of my nature as expressed by a different sort of test.  The internet might be right and I might be an INTP architect.  (Should the RCMP be reading this, I believe I just saved your analysts some profiling time by using your diagnostic tool upon myself.)  As if such a crude little instrument could diagnose me.  You know, a census taker once tried to test me . . .

But aside from, because of and to express my personal predilections, I believe symbolism should always be treated with a great deal of caution.  If one starts thinking beyond their suit, they may quickly find themselves in a costume.

As an example, I saw a fellow at fashion week who wore a nice suit.  The problem is that he was dressed exactly like a 1930s gangster.  The suit did not express its fundamental logic or the internal logic of his character.  Rather it was a recreation of a cultural archetype that he related to.  That is a costume.

I could leave the house dressed exactly as an Edwardian gentleman or in Roman toga.  I could have a replica of Beau Brummel’s suit built.  But, as Dandyism.net warns: “It’s easier to dress like Baudelaire than within his dictates.”

I don’t dress like anyone any more than I take dictation.  I am, however, concerned with principles.

And it is a thin line between suit and costume, between art and pretension; one that different people will draw in different places.  Should that fashion week fellow’s hat been different he might have looked good.  But, sadly, he lacked imagination, went strictly by the book and became Al Capone without the tommy gun or criminal empire.  And those are the most important part of that character.

It’s a line that I have occasionally crossed.  Doubtless, in my explorations, I will cross it again.  It’s the danger inherent in my goal of dressing with equal conformity and weirdness for 100 years in the past and 100 in the future.

These mistakes do not concern me.  They’re errors and, once recognized, can be quickly corrected.

Quite different from the costume, both in philosophy and execution, is what the screaming giantess, Tyra Banks, once called “Stepping it up.”  One cannot be afraid to take risks, to attack previously undefended territory and seize it.

Although each suit has its own independent logic, it must also and always relate to the man within it.  He is the common point of reference.  There is the self contained truth of a suit but also the constant relationship it bears to that man; what he has worn before and what he will wear after.

Each suit is a chapter but the man is the novel.

Should one refuse to step it up and move the story forward, they risk becoming a Tom Wolfe.  The same white suit repeated forever.  An exciting bore.

The most interesting thing about the human imagination is all the ways it finds to fail.  I’m sure half its efforts must be dedicated to that very subject.

You can fail through conservatism or costume.  You can go too far or not far enough.  You can find the exact right point and fail by remaining there too long.  Just as in kicking a drunk out of a bar, there is no right way to do it but there are a lot of wrong ways.  The best you can do is to avoid those.

Having just returned from my tailor with two new shirts, I am going to confidently state that I have straddled the abyss and managed not to fall in.  I have stepped it up.  My wardrobe now has a new option.  A nuclear option.

The shirt that aroused my greatest curiosity about its final result was a red and white one with the slightest traces of blue.  Its collar is an absurdly high four buttons and requires a pin. Its cuffs are fluted and contain secret buttons.  It is as much a feat of engineering as it is one of tailoring.  And it looks terrific.

But only under certain circumstances.

This is not the sort of shirt to be worn casually or with just anything.  In inexpert hands it could become costume.  In mine, it will not.

Tension is one of my favourite tools.  Between conformity and oddity, between the rules and their breaking.  More than the construction worker shouting vulgarities at women on the street, I like the slightly off-colour remark in the secure situation.  The rushing blush it occasions.  I prefer the hot breath on the neck to the orgasm. Tension.  Between propierty and its collapse.

This shirt is a study in such tension.  I will not wear it without a black suit.  Only that most morbid and dull of colours could reign it in.  Only the sharpest eye, unbeholden to the initial shock, would notice the relationship to the shape of the jacket cuff and that of the shirt.  The obscene and the absurd pull against the bland and the concise.  It is a rope stretched tight.

My wardrobe has stepped up into another order of reality.  I never suspected the existence of such a place until I stood before my tailor’s mirror, looking at the mushroom cloud.  It was a Los Alamos moment. My world has changed.

But not because it will be repeatedly used.

Just as a nuclear bomb renders all other forms of warfare polite, this has rendered all of my other suits and shirts, be they bright orange or pink, absolutely conservative and perfectly pedestrian.  That’s just by existing.  God only knows what it will do should it ever be used.  I expect annihilation.

Continue reading »]]> 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 to squeeze in a trip to the tailor. He had a shirt ready for me.

Made by Johanna E. Edwards, it is, as you can see, a checked pattern involving different shades of pink, purple, brown and blue. The colors is in service of a larger contraption: A suit so mind blowing that those who behold it will tremble in its glory and which I’ll be having my first look at on Saturday afternoon.

But even paired with something different, the shirt’s construction and fit are, as always, flawless. For now, I’ll be wearing it with my most conservative suits and ties and just letting it shine through. This is an English method of dress, somewhat hindered by my lack of a school or club tie. My school disapproved of me almost as much as disapproved of it and I’ve never joined a club. But I have been kicked out a few.

I’ve also decided that the cocktail cuffs are my favourite.