One kick-ass suit, 1973

Flying, jogging, swimming: each of them requires that you have the right clothing, (and several layers of it, from underwear to outer clothing), not to mention additional baubles here and there to dress things up a bit. Clothing kind of grows on you. The oldest clothes are is always the most comfortable. Governments and businesses clothe themselves in paper: single copies, multiple copies, printed matter. In order to give this mountain of paper a touch of class, the boys at the advertising agencies invented the “house style”: a complicated thingamajig with words in eye-catching typefaces. But the familiar images still do the job: the Droste mise en abyme repeating itself to infinity, the R.V.S. Insurance couple sheltering under their umbrella. The “bodystyle” with which Ruudt Peters seems to want to achieve a similar serenity in wallpaper for your body is less convenient. No matter how many times you wear it, his suit will not fit like an old glove. Moreover, the transparent suit, which is intended to be worn without underwear, cannot be worn over a beautiful body, because that would distract the eye from the beauty of the suit itself. One could extend this list with plenty of other disadvantages. But there are plenty of advantages too. Cleaning it presents no problem. The possibility of flying, if it is filled with helium. And then there is its buoyancy, and its wearer's tendency to bounce...
Compared with old-fashioned off-the-rack clothes, the form of the suit is alarming, with its hoses and nipple-sized valves. The former serve as a sort of canal system; the latter are intended for filling the compartments with air. They replace the jewellery which cannot be attached to the suit without the risk of puncturing it.
The PVC film is sewn and sealed by high-frequency waves, after PVX glue provided for an initial attachment. When inflated, the plasticity of the material decreases considerably, while the high gloss increases. Th soft, rounded shapes have their opposites in the sharp seams. Further arguments in defense of the inflatable suit are unnecessary, once one mentions the decadence of art.

Peter Karstkarel 1974