[Bartweiss]

And the whole Buzz Ricksons bomber jacket bit from Pattern Recognition goes down the same road.

The makers of the Rickson's have exaggerated this, but only very slightly, and done a hundred other things, tiny things, as well, so that their product has become, in some very Japanese way, the result of an act of worship. It is an imitation more real somehow than that which it emulates.

Something definitely caught Gibson's eye about Japan and imitative fashion, though I don't have the first-hand experience to see how accurate his take is. It definitely describes a trait I've seen in other replicas and exports, though; Japanese whiskey is an obvious example.

[gwern]

The coolest part about that I learned recently while looking into bomber jackets: it turns out life now imitates art, as Buzz Rickson got so many queries they asked Gibson for permission to make the black bomber jacket he describes in the novel (Gibson had misremembered the color). So a few years later, you could go and buy a William Gibson Rickson bomber jacket: https://williamgibsonblog.blogspot.com/2005/12/ Believe they're still making them. (Costs something like $600 depending on how savvy you shop and whether you're willing to go used.)

[rosbrith]

Yes, I'd forgotten about the Buzz Rickson!

I'm not inclined in any way to follow fashion but I was really taken with Gibson's attention to detail in these books. He has a way of imparting curiosity about the seemingly mundane and I have started to pay attention to similar traits in clothing.

[Bartweiss]

For my favorite bit of Gibson covering the mundane: https://www.gwern.net/docs/japanese/2002-gibson

That's a whole article about the art of mud-ball shining, and it's fascinating.

(It's also an intriguing taste of how Gibson got started on his last decade of topics. Otaku, crafting perfectionism, "the absolute narrowing of personal bandwidth", and so on.)