It's been "forever" since I played with the Founder gear that I have. Decided to take a look at it again and the Royal Founder Plate Armor is the WHIP, in terms of looks. Sleek, stylish. Port did a great job of drawing it up.
I consider the Founder's Equipment as "Dress Uniform" type of items. Not useful for adventuring once you've leveled and geared up accordingly, but great for social events.
I think that the RF plate armor looks awful. It literally looks like a soccer uniform or some kind of shirt. The earlier stuff was terrible - we were having armor that basically looked like American Football pads for a long time. Finally we recently got some assets that approaches what armor should like like - but only very recently.
Maybe it's just the kind of avatar it's on. The Royal Founder plate on my avatar has a nice black sheen to it and looks like rather form fitting, light armor. Better than the massively bulky Epic Plate base style looks, anyway.