Evan Gibson

nihil mutatem, omni deletum

[derek guy @dieworkwear]

Much of the discourse here reminds me of this quote by J. R. R. Tolkien.

[Evan Gibson @ThunderFoot23]

Sleep well, my friend, and dream of very small cats…

[Owlcat Games @OwlcatGames]

This is the level of testing we go through to make space in the game feel as realistic and authentic as possible.

[The Sting @TheStingisBack]

Rita Moreno is one of just three people to win an Emmy for The Muppets, the other two: Bernadette Peters and Peter Sellers. The comedy timing during her performance of "Fever" while Animal attempts to railroad her is incredible. It was also done in one take
"Dat my kinda woman!"

[derek guy @dieworkwear]

@pepsi affordability and housing

[Simon Maechling @simonmaechling]

Vaccines

[Evan Gibson @ThunderFoot23]

@ReysukaXO Ooh, you’re coming down under to visit us? Awesome!

[derek guy @dieworkwear]

Thank you for taking the time to write this. I have two disagreements.

First, you write this in your article:

"Most garments are designed around a set of assumptions: upright posture, visible shoulder line, some degree of muscle tone, and the ability to move through space without fabric collapsing, pulling, or distorting. Jackets sit cleaner when shoulders are held back. Trousers drape better when there's strength through the hips and legs. Knitwear behaves differently on a body that carries tension versus one that doesn't."

I don't understand this. How a garment hangs is a result of three factors: the pattern, the garment's construction, and the wearer's body. A garment can collapse, pull, or otherwise look messy if the pattern and construction don't match the body.

In slides one and two, I've attached some videos of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. The first video shows that he has a hunched posture and rounded back. The second video shows how he looks in his suits. I think his clothes fit in very cleanly. I can tell you that these are bespoke garments (likely made in France, although I'm not 100% certain). This means that the pattern was drafted from scratch for him. The garments were then perfected through a series of three fittings until the tailor got everything right.

In slide three, I've attached the opening scene to a James Bond film. Daniel Craig is wearing a Tom Ford suit in this scene, which means the garment is built from an adjusted block pattern. The block doesn't fit him, which is why it pulls at the waist and the collar hovers off his neck.

How is it that Mark Carney, an older male politician with a hunched figure, has better-fitting clothes than an athletic movie star? The answer is simply in how the pattern was drafted. To accommodate his rounded back, the tailors had to create a longer back balance (more material across the back). The neck point also had to be adjusted.

In slide four, I've attached a photo to show how a garment can be made to fit a hunched or an erect posture.

Whether a garment "behaves" well on your body is a matter of the garment's design, not your body. I'm reminded of a story I heard from New York bespoke tailor Len Logsdail, who has made clothes for several prominent figures, including Denzel Washington.

When he was a younger tailor, Len was fitting a client in a basted jacket. As he was struggling to get the jacket to fit right, he absent-mindedly said during the fitting: "You know, sir, you have a very difficult figure to fit."

The client turned to him and said, "God's work is perfect. Yours is not."

This, to me, is the essence of the issue. The fashion industry fails to make clothes that fit people, and then people blame themselves. The reality is that much of the fashion industry runs on aspiration and fantasy, so people often buy clothes based on people they wish to become or lifestyles they wish to have. The disconnect is what causes the issues you mention here.

For menswear, this was less of an issue before 1849, the year Brooks Brothers invented the first ready-made suit. Before that, most men had their clothes made at home or by a tailor, if they could afford one. Ready-made clothing was mostly limited to crude workwear, such as what was worn by miners, sailors, and people who were enslaved. Getting a garment to fit "right" was not really an issue, assuming your tailor was skilled, since the pattern was drafted from scratch based on your posture and measurements. IMO, your view is situated within the system of ready-to-wear production, which is a relatively new invention.

Unfortunately, Twitter limits the number of images I can attach to a reply. But if I could attach more, I would add some images from designers like Yohji Yamamoto or Comme des Garçons (if you're interested, you can look up their collections if you're not already familiar with them).

I would add these to illustrate my second disagreement. IMO, our notions of fit and silhouette are culturally contextual. In the images below, I'm working within the framework of classic men's tailoring. These principles are not universal — they don't derive from laws like those in physics or chemistry. Instead, they derive from a system when tailors made clothes for the ruling class, mostly those residing in Britain, Italy, and the United States.

In your essay, you jump between recognizing the subjectiveness of fashion and asserting a supposed objectiveness. But the tailoring principles below only seem "universal" because they derive from hegemonic culture. As Pierre Bourdieu pointed out in his book Distinction, our notions of "good taste" are often nothing more than the preferences and habits of the ruling class.

If we understand the suit as a garment with the jacket and pants made from the same cloth, you can see many suits in Yohji Yamamoto and Comme des Garçons's collections. Yet, their fits and silhouettes look nothing like what you see below because they don't aspire to imitate the looks of British, Italian, and American elites. They are creating a totally new language based on post-war Japanese ideas around decayed romance.

Thus, ideas about shoulder lines, trouser silhouettes, buttoning, etc., differ. And those clothes don't aim to replicate classical Western ideas of beauty (e.g., the hourglass shape for women, the upside-down triangle for men). Some of their silhouettes are concealing and, at times, even disfiguring! They don't seek to "flatter" in the Western sense.

It's true that it's harder to find clothes that fit if you have a certain body shape. This is true if you're very muscular, fat, short, tall, or whatever else. But this is the fault of the fashion industry, not consumers.

Sometimes professional athletes reach out to me and ask if I can help them find clothes. They are often the hardest to fit because they have unusual body shapes (as a result of their profession). This requires clothes to be made from scratch, as they can't fit into ready-to-wear or even made-to-measure.

IMO, we always start with a body — fat, slim, athletic, short, tall or whatever. The question is then how to clothe that body in a way that's emotionally and physically comfortable for the wearer. Also what clothes allow them to feel like "them." This is about helping them express what they want to express. Different people will require different solutions for this problem. But all of these bodies can look stylish because style derives from culture, not what the fashion industry provides us.

[Evan Gibson @ThunderFoot23]

@ReysukaXO Mmmm, dinosaurs….

[Evan Gibson @ThunderFoot23]

@grok @TangaroaG33K @buttercupxcos Well, really, you just make the sloth incredibly cute and cuddly and then Willow especially will just pat it.

Buffy would stand at the side looking around, trying to work out what else was going to go wrong because this is clearly too silly to not be a trap!

[Evan Gibson @ThunderFoot23]

@grok @TangaroaG33K @buttercupxcos Ok, this one is amusing.

[Evan Gibson @ThunderFoot23]

@misshortcake_ I miss kissing so much more than sex

[Evan Gibson @ThunderFoot23]

@MercyMorg Minus the loser part…

That’s a label people use when they can’t find a smart way to insult someone, it doesn’t mean anything if you are doing stuff you like!

It only even happens because they are usually into sports and that’s the only part of life that even -has- losers!

[Mason Mennenga @masonmennenga]

a lot of christians are like “what if we believed the exact opposite of what jesus said”

[derek guy @dieworkwear]

i hope at my funeral, everyone wears black except one man who wears a blue suit that's one shade lighter than navy. then my eulogy begins with: "to understand why black is the color of mourning, we must go back to the Roman Empire, where a dark toga known as the toga pulla was—"

[Storyteller Lemmy @LemmySmackett]

A squad of stormtroopers stand at port arms in the hangar bay of the Executor-class star destroyer. They face an imperial officer and the Emperor's Emissary himself, Darth Vader.

"Lord Vader!" The officer salutes. "We've located the rebel base. Ten squads stand by, ready to deploy."

"Good. Wipe the rebels out," Vader commands. "But take the princess alive. She belongs to me."

"Yes sir!"

"Remember, Lieutenant: the Emperor does not tolerate failure. Nor do I."

"Yes sir!"

From the middle of the squad, a stormtrooper's hand shoots up.

Vader glances at the hand then back at the officer.

He flinches. "TK-421!" The officer barks. "Put your hand down!"

"But I have a question," the stormtrooper says.

"TK-421! Disobeying a command is an act of insubordination. Punishable by death!"

The stormtrooper shrugs. "It's just a question."

The officer leans in, hissing: "Put. It. Down."

Vader lifts a palm. "Let him speak."

The officer whirls, pale white. "But sir—"

"The price of my displeasure is well known, Lieutenant. Let us hear why this man gambles not only his own life, but every life in this unit."

The officer gulps, sweat beading his worried brow.

TK-421 straightens up. "Lord Vader! Is it true there are Gungans in the rebel base?"

"We've received reports of deserters from the Gungan Grand Army embedded among the rebels," Vader replies."What of it?"

"Sir, I just wanted to ask..." TK-421 trails off, hesitant.

"Yes?"

"Can we rape the Gungan women?"

Vader stands motionless. The muffled dreambeat of imperial boots fills the hangar bay. Somewhere in the distance, a service droid beep-boops.

"...what?" The Sith Lord finally rasps.

The officer turns his head, cringing.

"I just wanted to know if we can get up in those Gungan guts. Sir."

The officer clears his throat and lifts a quivering finger. "Lord Vader—"

The Sith Lord reaches out and clasps his black hand, force-snapping the stormtrooper's neck. TK-421 drops to the floor, dead.

"Bantha's ball," the officer mutters.

Vader addresses the squad with barely veiled rage. "Does anyone else have a question?"

Another hand shoots up.

"TK-339!" the Officer yelps.

"What about the Gungan femboys?"

Vader stares at the grunt. "Gungan. Femboys."

"Gungan bussy is the best bussy, sir." TK-339 goes on. "I hear it's airtight. You know, from all the hydrostatic pressure?"

Vader reaches out again. TK-339 crumbles.

"Is anyone else in this Force-forsaken unit looking for permission to noncon a fish?"

A wave of hands shoots up. The officer seizes his own collar, trying not to faint.

Vader lifts his hand to kill them all, then notices a single stormtrooper in the back who has 𝘯𝘰𝘵 raised his hand.

"You. What is you're name?"

The stormtrooper straightens. "TK-223, sir."

"So you're the only soldier in this unit with any sense of decency."

"Actually sir," the stormtrooper says." I wanted to ask if it's true that Jar Jar Binks got a seat in the Senate cause he was raking Senator Amidala's reef wall."

----

Hours later, Darth Vader steps into Emperor Palpatine's chambers, soaked in blood.

"The raid on the rebel base is off," he declares.

"My word, DeeVee," Emperor Palpatine shifts on his throne.

"Re-scheduled for next week."

"What happened to you?"

"I've been massacring stormtroopers for the last three hours."

"Back to old habits?" Palpatine chuckles. "Hardly a productive use of your time. Or our men."

"We need to institute sexual harassment training across every branch of the Imperial Armed Forces."

"Now that's a bit drastic..."

"Four hours mandatory," Vader insists. "Every quarter!"

"Vader, big guy, what's this all about?"

"Rapists!" Vader shouts. "Every last stormtrooper is a rapist!"

The Emperor shrugs. "So?"

Vader whirls. "You knew?!"

"Vader, come on. We serve the Dark Side of the Force."

"Yes but—"

"What did you think that meant? Vibes? Papers?"

"Even so—"

"Essays?"

"It's unconsciousable!"

"Oh really." The Emperor tilts his head. "The youngling slayer is going to lecture us on what's consciousable."

"That's different," Vader protests.

"I think if we can make room for a child murder, we can make room for a few rapists."

"A few??"

"Okay, a few thousand." Palpatine twirls his hand.

Vader recoils. "You're serious."

"The Force is all about balance," Palpatine sing-songs.

"We can't allow it." Vader shakes his head. "We can't permit our fighting forces to be driven by such base and vile instincts."

Palpatine rolls his eyes.

Vader throws up his hands. "You don't see me doing whatever I please, being lead around by my dick!"

Palpatine leans back. "That's because it was burned off on Mustafar."

"Not the point!"

[Evan Gibson @Kinesia23]

Was thinking of an old friend I hadn’t seen in a while and serendipitously stumbled onto a valuable thread of theirs I’d sent to another ages past….

[Evan Gibson @ThunderFoot23]

@outbreakupdates Not now,
bleeding….

[Emmanuel @ejustin46]

8) ...facilitated by mutations in the N protein, may ultimately lead to an "Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome-like" condition, where the immune system is gradually undermined over time.

Thanks for reading 🙏

[Evan Gibson @ThunderFoot23]

@DrPops3 Correlation not causation?
Or even the causation goes the other way?