Men's Second Style

Trying on a new piece of clothing by Zabitan Assia of FORM is like finding a razor blade in the middle of a dozen roses from your lover–it hurts so good, and you know you should stop, after all there’s blood, but somehow you just don’t want it to end.  But then it does end, and you’re left waiting for your next fix, wondering Should I try cutting myself, or just wait for the next happy accident?  Okay, maybe it’s not exactly like that, but you get the idea.  Zab’s new Dinjy Jacket is all that and more.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again (in fact, I wrote it on a bathroom wall once): Zab gives good texture.  Never mind how I know; that isn’t important now.  What is important is how this black denim jacket looks like it’s been casually brutalized (somebody likes it rough) until it’s been broken in, broken down, broken into complete submission for your wearing pleasure, if not ecstasy.

For no doubt bizarre and unknowable reasons of his own, Zab has seen fit to provide no fewer than twelve different wearing options with this jacket: one plain, with no shirt; black tank; black tee; stained tee; white tank; and white tee.  Each of these six layering options comes both with and without the collection of metal-band patches you stole from your older brother (and boy, is there going to be hell to pay when he finds out).  Here, let’s do the math together: six shirt-layer options times two jacket options equals twelve wear possibilities.  Time and space (no, not the continuum) do not permit me to list or picture all the permutations here, but I’m having fun trying them all out, and I’m guessing you will too.  And of course you can layer your own tee under the plain version, so the possible variations just became effectively infinite.  But neither Zab nor I are responsible for that–you’re on your own.

All jacket variations are provided on the jacket layer, appropriately enough.  Also included is a shirt-layer item that gives the jacket looser, open cuffs at the wrists–kind of hard to make out in the first picture up top, but it’s there.  Oh crap, this makes for additional wear options, doesn’t it?  What are we up to now, 24?  Screw it, you figure it out. 

Do not walk, run to FORM right now (okay, you can fly or teleport) and pick up this bad boy while it’s hot.  It’s not too late to be the first on your fire-ravaged block.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering–I’m almost as tall as the big guy. 

Available for L$500 at FORM (Endicott 196, 56, 507).

I recently watched for the first time the original Japanese film “Gojira” (not the bastardized American version with Raymond Burr shoehorned in).  I found it to be profoundly sad, a stunning metaphor for Japan’s attempt to cope in the aftermath of the Bomb strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and an intelligent, sophisticated meditation on the paradoxical necessity and apparently ultimate impossibility of making responsible use of power.  Arguably, Gojira IS the Bomb…quite a far cry from a guy in a rubber suit stomping on a model of Tokyo.  It’s available at last on DVD.  You should see it.