Random fashion thoughts

[AR_Six]

The dress shirt part of my sale is done at least. This is a huge undertaking, I really don't understand how those MC sale guys have the time and patience to do their big sales on a regular basis, and they can't be making that much skrilla at it.

 

[wiru]

Originally Posted by LabelKing

In response to your Kristeva-ean dissection, all I have to say is that this should be an example of Kristeva-ean abjection

looking at that is like tasting the skin on the surface of milk

 

[Synthese]

Originally Posted by PinkPantser

yeah that was all to say that "We're all going to be really butt-hurt if and when it goes mainstream" is a ridiculous concept

Merely an analogy to suggest the same double bind of popularity being met with dismissive behavior - the same thing that happens everywhere in pop culture. TOJ seems like a horrible business concept for anybody who values their sanity - the goal doesn't appear to be, like many have said, to make hella skrill, at least, not for now.

Originally Posted by chronoaug

I always thought that he was trying to get some good patterns down, get more comfortable with the production side, and tweak his designs before going a bit more professional. I know he's keeping record of all the mtm stuff and seeing how it works out to see what his base size48 will be. I assumed that in a year he'd ramp up production, take away a lot of the full on mtm stuff, and have actual stock to quickly sell (prices probably a bit higher too as he's doing this hella cheap now).

I like that he's taking it slow and not rushing from not working directly in the fashion production industry (retail experience doesn't count) to doing big runs and keeping large stock and selling to other stores. Nice to see he has the patience as this manner seems like it's extremely time consuming, stressful, and not that lucrative

This.

Originally Posted by jet

Spot on about sz I'm afraid, was waiting for fuuma as I knew he would respond.



I think he's doing a good thing, basic pieces at a good price with no conceptual stuff. He's making money or he wouldn't be doing it, all those posts about how cheap production is and how much he can have stuff replicated for. Take details from various designers and incorporate them to make some mass appeal stuff that looks decent (better than jcrew, br, etc). Definitely fills a gap and is good for the sf uniform and that's a good thing for everyone.

Also this.

Originally Posted by Fuuma

Hmm. Ok so other people are stupid and misunderstand clothing. I see. Now tell me about your childhood and we'll discuss your objet a as it relates to fashion.

Easy. Early insecurities lead to an attempt to dominate others while avoiding conflict. The same could be said for most men. Also, I'm saying that "misunderstanding clothing" is a fundamentally flawed idea. It means different things to different people; but we still get to make (dare I say) ethical judgments.

And Bobo, the idea was to treat fashion as a text rather than the consumer as a mouse.

The original point of all of this was to say that people on both SF and SZ are morons, but in different ways.

 

[impolyt_one]

There aren't any Ferraris in the TOJ garage but I have like 6 or 7 mouths to feed and they all get their fair share. I don't pay myself, and I pay the two guys who work for me what represents their time expended and what is good to live on over here. We have learned a lot in the year that I've been doing this and utilize the internetz for telecommunications (0) so that we all have different work agendas each day and get stuff out, and can finish most workdays in an hour and a half. haha. Then we spend about an hour or two or more per day sitting around, drinking beers and shooting the ****, talking about ideas. The rest of the time in a day for us is just waiting for production people to finish making our stuff. The time we spend is shopping for textile and shipping stuff from the post office. I make my girlfriend who is on perpetual vacation help me at home with the handwork that goes into finishing the items and I pack them up, which takes a good amout of time actually, I spent about 3 hours just putting plastic bags on everything tonight for tomorrow's shipping.
Most of the time, my MO is sitting around with the dudes thinking about stuff people would like to have but either don't exist or don't exist at a reachable level for most people, and I put dizzhizz in charge of finding a way to make it, and I sit around and figure something out in my head til I have a 100% idea of how it's gonna look. That's why we don't make a lot of stuff - i haven't thought of it in detail yet, basically. I have a lot of other stuff I want/need to make but it won't happen til I have a vision for it. We don't have money to stab around in the dark and just make samples based on vague ideas, because you can run through a grand or two really quickly and piss a lot of people off in this line of work by not knowing what you're doing.

It is, though, a lot harder to make clothes than simply waking up one day and saying 'I will make clothes' - I believe there are about 3 or 4 components of thinking required just to make the clothes, beyond selling them, so for 3 people, we are doing a lot of work that most companies that sell clothing usually spread out amongst people. I think that the things one needs to make successful clothing projects is this - you need a mathematical mind, to sift through sizing, catalog numbers, etc; you need an artistic hand, to appreciate what goes into constructing and form... I spent all of last summer not sleeping, cutting pattern after pattern on my kitchen table, on glued together sheets of A4 paper with tons of swiss curves and hook rulers and saw those patterns made up day after day; I think beyond those two facets you need aesthetic swagger, to parse details you want and don't want in your clothes, and to come up with new ones, I think my peacoat is my personal favorite piece so far based on how it looks, how it's made, and the general reception of it, and it really came out just as I had envisioned it one day as I was daydreaming; and then I think lastly you need to have a background of clothes construction and textile appreciation - I learned this secondhand from my mother who was a hobby sewer, and through my like of clothes early on. I can walk through a textile market just blindly touching stuff at this point and tell you what the thread count and raw material content is - and know what they should be used for, which is something that people in textile trading companies learn over years of work. I did everything crash course style, spending every day at the textiles market for months, cutting the patterns at night, and seeing my products made in the meantime. I do believe if one of things is missing, a designer will not be able to fill a line of clothing without those 4 things. We're on these fashion-related forums, and not to vault myself or anything, but I think the number of people who can pull off all 4 and make a workable product as of tomorrow is very small, in the single digits. winq, who I lived with, could've done it, but he's pretty lazy. The rest of that sufu reformed gothninja group could probably do it, I think mikelowrey could probably do it, I think a couple guys on styleforum could do it, without background training. If one has 4 years or more to spend on learning the craft, then it's a different ballgame, but I'm talking about waking up tomorrow and becoming someone who makes clothes.

TOJ as of now though, what it is, I don't even know myself. It's fun and I like doing it. It's been exactly a year to date where I woke up in the morning, my girlfriend had an elaborate unrelated plan for something else and told me to make clothes as part of that plan, and so I started thinking on what I could make. The rest of the story is well known but I didn't really expect anything like this a year ago, so it's panned out well. The sufu thread was started in July and hit a million views yesterday.
I borrowed $300 to start TOJ as an experiment, and outlay to date has been minimal, really. I've wasted money on samples that will never see the light of day, I had some bad experiences, I ran away from a shop that made a terrible sample and didn't pay them, and I can't go back there obviously, but I've made that $300 back, to be sure. I studied marketing and worked in that field for a little bit so I have an idea of what I am doing here but I realize a lot of it after the fact; I am kind of inventing my own business model. You guys might be surprised at how it works, and it's not something everyone can just hop into clones of, wouldn't work that way. It's a lot of work but I think it's something I will keep developing over time. It definitely could not have happened even 2 years ago, I believe, there are various factors contributing to that.

There are a lot of other things that have happened along the way but I am really happy obviously with how things are turning out. I like that I work towards something new everyday, and learn new stuff everyday as well. Beats my old jobs where I was a cubicle prisoner.

 

[wagthesam]

yeah you are getting a very good education funded by sf and sufu.

+ a funded entry to market

 

[willy cheesesteak]

Originally Posted by Biggie

And if you don't knowww, now you know, *****
..

 

[impolyt_one]

yeah I am. the support I get at SF and sufu is phenomenal and it's been kind of surreal for the past year. I am definitely a lot weirder since I started doing this, I talk to myself all the time, I wander around, my body clock hasn't allowed me to sleep before 6am for a year, and I just babble all day about clothes generally, the guys who work with me might understand half the time but they know i need to knead my thoughts out like that to get to a point. I am so engrossed in all this of making my own clothes that I haven't even been shopping for clothes since a year ago really, and I used to do that all the time, like 2-3 days a week.

 

[impolyt_one]

also, we're starting a pub as a front to launder the TOJ money in with food/drink sales money

, and have a physical HQ Temple, with an iMac behind the counter where we sit and make clothes on the sly during the daytime when it's dead. I will be in the kitchen in the back, making immense food - staple pub food with elegant twists and the best ingredients, at reasonable prices. TOJ permeating my entire existence at this point.

 

[indesertum]

when's the pub opening up? i might be back in korea in the summer

 

[LA Guy]

I just put my moto on to support Drew. Plus, it's super cold in the house for some reason. I think that Drew is building a solid foundation for whatever comes next.

Someone asked me in late January whether I knew a factory that could get a very difficult RTW line shipped for SS10. This would be the opposite of the right approach to building something successful.

 

[LA Guy]

http://www.oki-ni.com/Mens-Jackets+O...nvt/ndg0159grn

Really? A hooded blazer? In 2010? I mean, it was cool in 2003 (Yoko Devereaux did a really solid version in heavy cashmere), but it seems sort of dated in 2010. Not like it is an iconic pattern or anything either.

 

[wagthesam]

What is with the ridiculous price diferences in ndg? Brigade has that hooded blazer for 300$.

 

[Vashin]

Originally Posted by LA Guy

http://www.oki-ni.com/Mens-Jackets+O...nvt/ndg0159grn

Really? A hooded blazer? In 2010? I mean, it was cool in 2003 (Yoko Devereaux did a really solid version in heavy cashmere), but it seems sort of dated in 2010. Not like it is an iconic pattern or anything either.

Junya has one too....

http://www.tresbienshop.net/en/art/j...ded-jacket.php

 

[LA Guy]

Originally Posted by wagthesam

What is with the ridiculous price diferences in ndg? Brigade has that hooded blazer for 300$.

Nom de Guerre has different pricing strategies for different markets. Not sure what exactly they were thinking, but that's pretty much it.

 

[KitAkira]

Originally Posted by SuperBobo

mentioning psychoanalysis = immediate ban. We should rather analyze the urge to dress fresh based on a subcortical reward/motivational framework.
You probably feel this way because you have repressed urges to sleep with your mother