His Fashion 101 nowadays starts with layer one: underwear.
However, Dayhoff doesn’t do basic, run-of-the mill, mass-produced department-store underwear.
Richard Dayhoff Underwear is high-end fabric, made in Japan, fusing fashion with an athletic look, design and feel. It’s an advanced athletic performance feel, with an innovative control system.
Yes, it’s just underwear—and, yes, it carries an $80 or $90 price tag per pair.
“If you’re putting beautiful clothes on your body, but [first] putting Jockey or Calvin Klein underwear on, that doesn’t really make sense,” Dayhoff said.
Richard Dayhoff Underwear is timeless and functional luxury—not goofy-looking or fun underwear, he said, but rather, it’s clean-looking, minimal, well-made and classic.
“This is not the $30 underwear [that is for sale] at Nordstrom’s,” Dayhoff said. “I consider fashion starting from the first layer, underwear.”
Dayhoff’s underwear is more athletic, more masculine than just cotton. It’s quick-drying and doesn’t fade or stretch, he said.
Richard Dayhoff underwear is sold at Zeglio Custom Clothiers and online. A small store for the products is planned for the Gold Coast neighborhood, although no opening date has been confirmed.
Dayhoff starred in the women’s fashion world for about 20 years. Oprah Winfrey wore clothes that Dayhoff designed, and he even appeared on her show. Plus, his work has been featured on the cover of Women’s Wear Daily, and in such publications as Harper’s Bazaar, W magazine, Elle Magazine and others.
“The [women’s] clothes that I designed were very simple, timeless. All of the clothes I designed for women in the 1980s, you could [still] wear them today for the most part. There was a timeless elegance to what I did, and [that’s] still true today.”
His products are “very dark [colored], very architectural, very simplistic,” he said.
THE STATS
Relationship status
Single
Neighborhood
Lakeview
Job title
Fashion designer
Hobbies
Meditation, working out, traveling, hanging out at coffee shops
Favorite local restaurant
Yoshi’s Cafe
Favorite local bar
Wang’s
Favorite movie
A Single Man
Little-known fact
Only dresses in black
Photos courtesy of Dayhoff