The new official TOJ thread, 2011 - Page 1454

Well, I don't consider myself to have much mastery of MC's finest rules or anything, I just wear what I like, regardless of genre. To the point though, I have just taken a liking to those Italian dress shirts because as someone who understands how the clothes are made, the difference between a good handmade dress shirt and some machine-made factory run thing is like night and day. Vending machine food vs a full-service dinner. I only lamented that you can't get that kind of construction in a casual oxford you wear with more stuff. Looks off if you try to wear one of those bright Italian dress shirts casually, you'd look like your average Macy's nightclub bro if you do that. We are better than that.

I copped some Uniqlos recently too, because I have taken to travelling with just my passport and my iphone - went through a few years where I was lazy and didn't buy myself any new socks or underwear, and i can always use white tees, so when I travel now, I just watch the clock and then show up for my flight without luggage (terrorist style) and then buy Uniqlo at Narita or go to Uniqlo when I get into the middle of Seoul, either works, and just the hotel freebies or go to the convenience store to buy a toothbrush and stuff. I bought some Uniqlo in NY too, lol. I just hate packing and wasting time preparing stuff like that, but when I am on the move I need some clothes asap so I just get anything that works. In fall/winter/spring, I can just buy fresh tees and socks and underwear, and in the summer I do the same or get some of the $20 OCBDs. Sometimes I send a box of dirty clothes home via EMS, lol. As I dirty my clothes I just put them back in the shopping bag and then take it to the post office on the last day on my way out. Super minimalist travel, usually it's for working in Seoul anyway, so I need cheap clothes to wear.

Anyway, with the Uniqlo OCBD's - they're actually better than I ever remembered them to be when I first tried them like 5 or 6 years ago. The sleeves were really short. They're still short, but not as bad as before. I have a problem with shirt sleeve in standard sized shirts coming up about 1/2" -1" short of a perfect fit. APC is the same, most other brands the same. Back to the 'qlo, though- the fit is decent as you'd expect, the fabric is actually not so bad for a $20 ($30? can't remember) shirt, the buttons are cheap as hell, and the construction is average, but I get the feeling it'd last for a long time. Still, that BBBF shirt I have had for awhile has the nicest little single needle seams, and the fabric is pretty nice - it's light but seems to have been pre-treated to give it a calandered sheen (I don't really know what that entails, maybe it's mercerized cotton or something) - as I said, the fit is terrible though, it lets the whole thing down. Need the next level.

Anybody have the TOJ dress shirts we made awhile back? (only made a very small handful of them, kelvin has one or two) - I want to use the same MOP buttons as we used on those. They're really nice, really expensive. They are thicker than even the Italian buttons I have on my dress shirts, but have a significant dish too, they look amazing. We can get them in white or smoke (petrol colored?) but I think we'll stick with the classic white pearl.

Fabric is this:

yeah this was my 'packing' for my last Korea trip, will be the same on Thursday. (didn't take the computer) - did just fine. I screencap my e-ticket and my accomodation reservations on my iPhone and then show it to people at the counter. Actually, don't even need to when you're on e-tickets, you just hand them your passport and they swipe the bar nowadays, and your flight comes up.

As I recall, you bought a shirt from the sample sale - it was probably a full size too small for you. I'm hoping v1 and v2 don't get compared, because I'm stating right now - there will be no comparison. v2, if successfully made, will trounce v1. I think v1 was a good shirt for $125, the fit was good, and we tried to put in some nice details and buttons, but considering the cost of fabric, labor, and shipping there - there wasn't much room to go beyond what was a standard shirt. If I spend more to get more, I can make a far finer shirt - materials, construction, etc.

Embarrassing story I should relate, and a good motivator for this v2 shirt project - I met up with some guys in LA or NY at some point and one of the guys was wearing a TOJ shirt. He kept looking at me kinda sheepishly and I was like 'nice shirt, who made that?' - didn't realize it was a TOJ at first. That was kinda embarrassing. It was a white oxford, so yeah, but I mean, on one hand, we did some details to differentiate the shirt design - the 2-piece pocket, the 2-piece placket, the super thick shell buttons - but from a glance, I didn't recognize my own design. I am pretty sure with this new v2 design I want to make, if someone sitting before me is wearing one, I (and everyone else eventually) will know exactly what it is. It will be fine and sophisticated, but recognizable for what it is, too. That is a good thing.