Hello again! Hope you all are doing well!

AOKU is a well known member of the techwear community, posting in various forums such as superfuture, reddit and Discord. He was, like many of us, fed up with what items he could buy, and started doing his own branded stuff. I ordered his patches a few weeks ago, and got them shipped with the pods pouches, which he kindly provided to me. I now review the patches, and the pods are due to the next AOKU review with some more pictures of my EDC.

Website – Customer Experience

When you go to AOKU’s website, you have a sleek disigned look in front of you. AOKU is a certified designer with a degree, and it shows. The whole website is as black and white and as minimalistic, as his items, with a touch of digital rebellion inside. On Instagram he depicts his patches with the caption “kernel patch uploaded”, which i particularly like.

As soon as you click on the individual items, there is a slideshow of pictures describing the individual patches availabe, how they are made up, and there is a quick and easy method getting them in your shopping cart. I paid with paypal and got the items shipped within a week or so, which is perfectly fine. Every patch was costed at 5 €, so i paid 30 € with shipping to Germany.

AOKU patches

I ordered the following patches: ONE [ONEMANARMY], KAWAII [the AOKU lettering], HEX [616F6B75], SEE [the word Unseen black on reflective material] and SPAM [the AOKU logo].

The AOKU logo patch is a unique one, since its a silicone moulded form glued onto the adhesive velcro. The rest of the patches is made out of 0.7 mm nylon webbing with the letters printed on it. Except on the SEE patch the velcro is taken as a double layer for added stability. The SEE patch is made out of a thinner black reflective sheet with black print on it.

I really like the patches. Of course, carrying AOKU’s designs and logos with me around is a bit of advertising, but the logos are so well designed that I enjoy the statement I am giving off by wearing items with these patches attached to them. The patches hold firmly onto the surface i patch tem on, maybe even a bit too firmly: the SEE patch is thinner, and i could not get a firm grip on it to get if off the inside of my backpack (which has velcro on all the inner sides to attach different pouches). I had to take out my pliers to grab them and pull them off the backpack, so the pliers left a dent in the patch surface.

That is all not too much of a hassle, since the velcro loses a bit of its strength after some time, but that was not the most pleasurable experience with this patch.

But that aside, the patches are great. They even came with a set of AOKU stickers, which are patched onto my sewing machine, Wacom tablet and other things in my apartment now.

One thing to note though: I didnt calculate what the hex code 616F6B75 means – a quick google search did not show up any results. I am sure there is some hidden meaning behind it, maybe the AOKU name in some letters, maybe some colour code – i don’t know yet. But as soon as I find out, I will post that info in the blog. [EDIT: yes, it is confirmed: 616F6B75 means AOKU if you convert it from the ASCII table – nice one, Dani!]

Verdict

AOKU’s patches are well made, look great and offer some interesting individualization fpr your tech wear pouches and jackets. You can tuck them onto everything which has a soft velcro strip, which you can sew yourself onto almost anything related to clothing. They are priced at a fair price. I recommend these patches to anyone, who wants some interesting black and white patches for his gear. Just be sure that you dont stress the SEEN patch too much.

@AOKU: If you are reading this, maybe you could sew the layer of reflective tape for the SEEN patch onto a layer of 0.7mm nylon webbing or a bit thinner ? That would give the patch a little more stability.

Thanks for reading! Keep doing well, and until the next time, dear reader.