Sequel to the Ring

I almost never leave home without my rose gold signet ring with brown diamonds, so I decided to make pavé diamond pinky rings my style signature. I think signet pinky rings are unobtrusively comfortable, classically masculine, and are the perfect little vehicle for daytime diamonds. Here's the new one I had co-designed with Jane Sy and Yen Guevara of Lanero Fine Jewelry in Manila:

The white diamonds on blackened yellow gold make for a bolder, high-contrast statement, as opposed to the brown diamonds on rose gold which is more tone-on-tone.

Alas, my hyper-acidic sweat so quickly stripped off the black plating, as you can see the gold peeking through the side of the ring in this photograph, and I will have to bid farewell to the ring for about a month as it gets re-plated in Hong Kong.

at breakfast, with Earl Grey crème tea and a gray nail

Look at the stones, huddled like tiny moons on a dark winter's night.

See the ring in progress here.

photographs by Nikki Tuason

DIY: The Lace-trimmed Coat

Occupying one of the precious coat hangers on my leaning clothing rack was a white coat too large and too square to look sharp. It was high time I did a DIY project; and though I'm content wearing nearly all-black nearly everyday, I thought it would be a worthwhile challenge to push myself to resurrect an unworn piece and personalize it with a method never used before: no more paint, no more cutting, and no more studs. So I trimmed it with a material that would be top-of-mind for any normal boy: black Venetian lace.

Here's what I used: Heat N Bond iron-on no-sew adhesive, textile adhesive in a tube, a yard and a half of black Venetian lace, and a steam iron

This Theory X Barney's Green coat was gathering dust in my closet. I resisted the urge to paint-splatter it in primary colors and instead spent a little more time and effort and went mildly Oscar de la Renta on it with a band of black lace trim along the hem.

I trimmed the iron-on adhesive to fit the bottom part of the lace, minus the protrusions. I then ironed the adhesive on to the lace, peeled off the paper backing, and positioned it on to the coat, following the line of the hem stitching to keep it aligned.

I then ironed the lace on to the coat, panel by panel. The instructions say "no steam needed," but I found that with the thickness of the lace, it helped get the heat on to the adhesive and have it bond better.

With the base of the lace trim attached, I carefully glued on the rest of the trim with the textile glue.

As always, I heat-set the trim with a hair dryer, just to make sure everything is dry and bonded.

As a finishing touch, I trimmed off all straggly threads and glued on any pieces that seemed to be gaping open.

Here it is worn:

Illesteva sunglasses, DIY lace-trimmed coat, printed chiffon shirt of my own design, Black Fleece belt, Uniqlo black jeans, Opening Ceremony shoes

close-up of the lace on the coat

Opening Ceremony lace and zip shoes with a lace-trimmed zip-up coat

last three photographs by Michael Shaeffer

Ring in Progress

You know the feeling when you have a pan of brownies baking in the oven and you just can't wait to stud it with nuts and chocolate and for it to cool and find its way into your mouth? Imagine that pan of brownies forged in 14-karat gold, to be plated in the blackest of black, and to be sprinkled with the most brilliant of white diamonds---dear I can hardly wait to slip it on my finger!

The sequel to my everyday signet pinky ring in rose gold with brown diamonds, which I had also co-designed with Lanero Fine Jewelry, is in production. It'll be larger and round but very slightly oval, plated pitch black, and set with star-white diamonds slightly larger than those used to pave my previous ring. This is the unfinished ring, un-set and un-plated. In a couple of weeks, it will adorn my left pinky in full splendor.

Salivating.

The Shantung Jacket + Maharlika in Manhattan

I was meandering about at my favorite fabric shop when I recalled that one conversation I had with my bosom Boston buddy Mia, where we looked back with fondness and mild disgust at our prom looks. I wore a miserably mismatched suit that included a heavy gray tweed jacket (in the heat of Manila!) with a drawstring necktie from a mall kiosk, while she wore a saccharine-bright beaded, corseted gown with matching fabric purse and shoes, all in the unflatteringly iridescent fabric du jour at the time: silk shantung. Silk shantung, a textured type of silk usually blended with polyester, is sold in abundance and at attractive prices today in the year 2011. I thought to myself, why not reinvent the textile of terror and make something wearable out of it?

tailor-made shantung jacket with velvet lapels, American Apparel tank top, H&M jeans, Gucci loafers

And that's just what I did. I purchased enough of fabric in black to make a jacket, and picked up some velvet for trim. I had the vision of the jacket in my head, and gave my tailor the specifications for this project: sharp, fitted shoulders, a relaxed torso with barely any taper, and velvet peaked lapels as wide as humanly possible.

I thought plastic buttons would be too mundane, and bright metal buttons would be too strong. So I finished off the jacket with these silk knot buttons that I had purchased a while back but never got to use. I think there is a certain refinement in using fabric buttons, especially on a jacket in a rather delicate material.

Hermès silk scarf worn as a cummerbund

Though I may not be the biggest Gucci groupie, these shoes are a classic style from ages ago and are the closest I could get to owning a piece of Tom Ford-era Gucci... at least for now.

I had a late morning meal at Resto Leon in the East Village, where Sundays, it turns into Maharlika, a guerilla brunch spot serving modern Filipino cuisine.

at Leon, cross ring a gift from my friend Kathleen Sullivan

Brunch was excellent. Flavorful, well-executed, with just the right touch of inventiveness.

The food ranged from the kitschy-cool:

my plate, Eggs Imelda. Their take on Eggs Florentine, with laing (taro leaves in coconut milk) in place of spinach, pan de sal in lieu of English muffins, and a hollandaise sauce made with the Filipino mini-limes called calamansi. Fried sweet potatoes and prawns on the side.

Tang mimosas, bright and surprisingly subtle

to just plain kitschy (and pretty darn enjoyable!):

Walk into a typical Filipino home and they would offer you a glass of Tang orange juice, with just a little too much water and sugar to keep it mild and sweet.

Nagaraya cracker nuts

sisig (grilled sizzling pork face) with liquid MSG also known as Maggi seasoning

to superbly-done classics:

Good balut (fertilized, half-way formed duck eggs typically served as the ultimate challenge on Fear Factor) is hard to find in Manila; in Manhattan, it's quite an impressive feat.

the tastiest arroz caldo (congee/rice porridge) with shredded chicken and anatto oil

posing away my brunch on 11th Street

Dearest readers, I write to you now from my new apartment in New York. Yes, I've finally made the move after months of being a couch-surfing resident of the city. Feel free to say hi if you see me on the street. I don't smile, but neither do I bite. And I promise not to set up camp in front of your favorite mirror at the next sample sale.

x

Izzy

photos by Pop Bop and Snap

The Shape of Pants to Come

There is a reason for the general absence of skinny pants in the latest men's runway shows. They aren't the most comfortable, nor are they the most flattering on people who don't have pins for legs. And to be frank, we're all just sick of them. Hence, when I was in Manila a few weeks ago, my tailor and I worked together to create the perfect pair of, if you may, "baggy pants" that I will be wearing in the coming months.

Number (N)ine sunglasses, band-collar oversize printed chiffon shirt of my design, J. Crew belt, tailor-made trousers, Martin Margiela shoes

My specifications were stringent: though the trousers were to be relaxed, I didn't want them to be sloppy. I had my tailor have the waist brought up high as he used to do it for gentlemen back in the day, and taken in 3/4 of an inch smaller than my waist size to emphasize the shape. Three sharp, yet shallow pleats on each leg to keep the pants from looking like a parachute, and the hem cut just a little too short, because I like my shoes visible. And I had them made in the same structured black wool that my favorite slimmer pleated pants were made out of. Overall, I'm quite pleased with the result. In color:

The shirt was pretty much inspired by the fabric; I had found the most billowy, lightly textured chiffon in a print a little finer than what I usually go for. I thought a narrow band collar would keep it looking soft and long sleeves would show off the way the fabric flows better than short sleeves would.

the baby-soft cream Margiela laceless lace-ups

In the spirit of clean lines and big shapes, I decided to eschew the noisy stack of metals in favor of one big chunk of watch. (Santos 100 watch by Cartier)

So what do you say, is it time we bid sayonara to skinny jeans?

Matchy Matchy

For once, I wanted a shirt and a pair of pants so right for each other that I'd need never to dilly-dally about whether or not some other article of clothing would go better with either of them. So I had my tailor make me a matchy-matchy suit.

pin from the Brooklyn Flea Market, DIY barb-wire necklace, tailor-made matchy-matchy suit, Opening Ceremony side-zipped oxfords

When I came down to the garage where I usually take pictures, the entire household staff looked my way and chuckled. Whether they were laughing with me or laughing at me was immaterial; the idea that my sartorial choices could bring even a twinkle of a smile to the face of another already filled me with wonderment.

Why have we grown to have such aversion to matchy-matchy? A world where colors and prints sing in harmonious unison might not be such a bad thing after all.

The entire suit is done in a light blue striped seersucker of just the right weight: heavy enough to be sewn into pants but not too thick to be made into a relaxed shirt. I contrasted the classic seersucker with watercolor floral trim on one breast pocket, one sleeve, and a two-inch stripe on each trouser leg.

Much as I want to take full credit for this foolishness, I'm not the first to do matching trousers and a top. B. Store has done it in navy and white gingham as seen on Steve of Style Salvage, and Nicholas Petrou did it with chambray and ethnic prints for Spring 2011. I'd like to think I took the best of both worlds and evoked B. Store's gentlemanliness with a similarly "proper" fabric, seersucker, and then took a page out of Petrou's whimsy with a watercolor floral print of my own choosing.

The waistband tabs and the box pleats on the pants were also my idea, and I'm quite pleased with the way they turned out. It makes me wonder why we don't see much of these in modern clothing. (nail ring by Martin Margiela)

The pin on the collar is a spoof of a childhood favorite, Doublemint Gum, and the necklace is white leather barb-wire trim purchased from M&J in New York, hastily knotted at the back.

Opening Ceremony forest green side-zip lace-up shoes

All was right with the world when I was five and I knew that my dinosaur-print shirt went perfectly well with my dinosaur-print shorts made out of the same fabric. I might not look the sleekest or the sharpest in this silly suit but oh, to feel five again at quarter-life is the sweetest feeling.

DIY: The Rorschach Inkblot Jacket

Home for the holidays and then some, I was leafing through clothes I had left in Manila in search of something salvageable. When I found this plain white denim jacket that I had not once worn, I set out to make something beautiful out of it.

white denim jacket by Topman

When the photos from the Dries Van Noten Spring 2011 show came out, I knew those Rorschach-esque ink-blotchy shirts dear old Dries sent down the runway were fairly feasibly DIY-able.

Dries Van Noten Spring 2011 (via GQ.com)

But for this project, I wanted a more literal interpretation of this inkblot test psychologists use to detect underlying thought disorders, so I pulled up photos of Rorschach's original tests for inspiration.

card no. 2 from "Rorschach Test – Psychodiagnostic Plates" (via Wikipedia)

I wanted to do something symmetrical like Rorschach's cards, but not quite. As for the color palette, I was subliminally inspired by the Rajo Laurel dress my mother wore on New Year's Eve, which featured mixed black-and-white prints contrasted with color blocks of bright green:

color inspiration: mixed-print jersey dress by top Filipino designer Rajo Laurel

Here's how I did it:

I drew up a rough sketch of where I wanted to plant the blotches.

I then lined the entire jacket, torso and sleeves, thick with newspaper to prevent the ink from blotting through to the back.

I took a couple of shades of marker refill ink, the strongest ink available in the office supplies store,

and went to town with the ink in a medicine dropper: dropping ink-bombs from about two feet above, and painting graceful ink-blobs on contact. I then heat-set the stains with a hair dryer (not pictured).

But the blots were not as sharp as I had hoped for them to be, and the green ink was a little on the lifeless side, so I decided to accentuate the print with dabs of zesty grass green acrylic.

I squeezed a bit on a paper plate, and added a few highlights with the best paint applicator: my fingers.

The paint dried a deeper, richer color and here's what came out of the jacket:

DIY Rorschach inkblot jacket. (Look closely and tell me what you see.)

And here it is worn:

DIY inkblot jacket, Gap shirt, gray pearl necklace, Louis Vuitton belt, tailor-made trousers, Number (N)ine shoes

Details:

The necklace is a long strand of gray Philippine pearls, the belt is my brother's, now bestowed upon me, and the watch is a Cartier Roadster on navy alligator.

Though they took many a painful and frigid weekend in New York to break in, these Number (N)ine monk-strap flat creepers have become my current favorites. The pair in ever-versatile beige suede seem to bring that much-needed dark Japanese-ness to every outfit.

my wearable psych-test-cum-painting up close

When our family chauffeur saw the jacket and remarked that the pattern seemed to have a meaning he couldn't figure out, I knew my job was done.