David Leigh

The thing that goes bump in the night.
Gothic goddess wife. RIP Hellhound. European.

[David Leigh @DavidLeigh]

@wearetherace Blandness?

[Phillips P. OBrien @PhillipsPOBrien]

This might be hard for Americans to hear, but the USA getting humiliated by its abject failure as a power during this Iran War might be the best thing possible at this time. The country needs to understand there are consequences for electing a crook.

[MercuryMarin(er)Strade @MarinStrade]

@BasedMikeLee The European mind rightly thinks it is tacky, tone-deaf, vulgar, lowbrow, low-IQ, and ignorant. Only the dumbest, most base, crass, and stupid could be entertained by this.

[Mick Ryan, AM @WarintheFuture]

Ukraine has just struck a Russian defence plant with its new long-range FP-5 missiles and damaged a key bridge to Crimea. Things keep getting worse for Putin and Gerasimov. My Part 2 assessment of Russia's losing war, and how Putin might reverse things. 1/5 🧵

[David Leigh @DavidLeigh]

@DrNeilStone Tough one. Can I phone a friend?

[Dr Terry Simpson @drterrysimpson]

The confidence of someone who is ignorant. HPV and why I vaccinated my son.
HPV doesn’t cause cervical cancer in men—but it causes throat, anal, and penile cancers. The vaccine reduces infection with the cancer-causing strains, which lowers both personal risk and transmission. That’s why we vaccinate boys.

[ALASTAIR CAMPBELL @campbellclaret]

While the world’s media obsesses over every spit and fart from the White House over Iran, and Trump’s endless commentary on talks and deals and negotiations, the 🇷🇺 🇺🇦 war he said he would solve in 24 hours continues unabated … and in addition to benefiting from the oil price rise and lifting of sanctions Putin has also unleashed the largest 24 hour aerial attack on Ukraine since the war began. Almost 1000 drones. A UNESCO world heritage site hit. A maternity hospital hit. Residential buildings hit. Several killed. Dozens injured. Barely registers on the news. This war must not be forgotten

[Sir William Browder KCMG @Billbrowder]

I’m trying to remember who else used these same terms…

[David Leigh @DavidLeigh]

@Mishi_2210 31 - 30 dead plus the killer. Everyone else fled.

[Phillips P. OBrien @PhillipsPOBrien]

Watching Trump teeter on the edge of blowing up the world economy because of a combination of hubris, strategic incoherence, mendacity and outright stupidity, might be the most extraordinarily depressing thing I have observed in my entire life, or read about in any other period.

[RC deWinter @RCdeWinter]

Putin and Biden were wrapping up a discussion.

Putin: “You know, Joe. I had this dream few days ago"

Biden: "Oh? Tell me about it.”

Putin: "I saw America in flames. A nuclear warhead crater where Capitol used to be. New York leveled. Los Angeles covered in human ash. It was glorious, Joe. I nearly teared up.”

Biden: "Huh. that's a weird dream. Well, I had one of my own few days ago as well."

Putin: "Go on.”

Biden: "I saw Moscow brilliant again. Full of dancing, laughter, people driving imported cars. Wearing the latest designer clothes. Very European, just like it was before the sanctions. And neon signs and slogans everywhere! They were too bright to ignore!"

Putin: "What did they say, those neon signs?"

Biden: "Who the fuck knows? I don't speak Ukrainian.”

[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.

[Tom Morello @tmorello]

God help us all. There are no penguins in Greenland you murdering idiot

[Shaun Pinner @ShaunPinnerUA]

Hear me out, I have a cunning plan…….

[Gabrielle Blair @designmom]

When Trump needs medical care, the only person he should be allowed to seek help from is RFK Jr.

[Kate from Kharkiv @BohuslavskaKate]

The narrative of exceptional Ukrainian resilience is one of the most harmful tropes I’ve seen during this war.

​Yes, we refuse to give up. Yes, we have picnics in -15°C. Yes, we keep living, drinking coffee, and even laughing occasionally, but all of this stems from a lack of choice.

​We are no more resilient than any other nation. You cannot expect us to carry the weight of the world on our shoulders while being bombed and burying our friends, only to pat us on the back for how well we take the hit.

​Ukrainian resilience is not exceptional, this narrative only creates the illusion that we can withstand anything. In reality, we are just normal people caught in an awful situation, who needs help, not a pat on the shoulder.

[Rupert Myers @RupertMyers]

If ever there was a time for western intelligence agencies to leak what they have on Donald Trump (the Moscow Ritz-Carlton, anyone?) this is it.

[Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський @ZelenskyyUa]

Our intelligence reports that Russia is preparing new massive attacks. We are speaking frankly to our partners—both about air-defense missiles and the systems we need so much. Supplies are insufficient. We are trying to speed things up, and it's crucial that our partners hear us.

[Simon Raymonde @mrsimonraymonde]

I’m not a voter of either party but I have eyes and you could post it 10,000 times and I would never believe this event needed to end with an armed officer shooting a young innocent woman at point blank range. Let the vehicle pass and then have a vehicle cop lay down a tyre deflation device on the road to render the vehicle immobile. Shoot out the tyre if you have to but don’t shoot a defenseless woman in the face. This has nothing to do with democrats or republicans. This is a result of right wing extremism and a government who thinks all citizens who don’t agree with their policies are terrorists. Do you not want to live in a democracy?

[Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 @IAPonomarenko]

In reality, during talks with Witkoff, Zelensky can offer virtually anything as a concession (within reason, of course) -- even something like a formal renunciation of NATO aspirations.

No “compromise” made at Ukraine’s expense will stop Putin or secure any real peace.

Ukraine’s task right now is one thing and one thing only: to avoid giving the Trump people grounds to accuse it of being “unconstructive.” That’s all.