The Journey, The Strife, The Joy.

I'm glad you've found your way to this site, and hopefully you find an interesting read here.  Hopefully you'll also treat yourself to one of these very special creations of course!  But since this isn't what you'd class a full-on commercial web site, it wouldn't be complete without a bit of a Blog.

You wouldn't believe what a turd-strewn path lies ahead of you if you start out from scratch and try to get a good leather jacket made.  With no knowledge of the clothing industry beyond conversational heresay, and with only some pictures and some videos to work from, how the heck do you do it?

Trial and error - sort of.  We've been round the houses on this project, hell yes.  Having finally got there, several patterns now exist, all commissioned and paid for from my own pocket, as were the several samples made up along the way.  You'd think that should be plenty to arrive at an accurate, quality replica.  But the finished item remained frustratingly elusive for a long time.  Between all the companies we tried, we encountered such vexments as seeing fit to monkey with the design and add buttonholes and extra stitching lines "because it would be more in keeping this style of the jacket" (NO! NO! MORONS!  What part of "REPLICA" and "COPY EXACTLY" isn't clear??), then there was a company who ****ed around endlessly, talking the talk, but ultimately presenting a 4Kg MONSTER of a thing made from diplodocus hide, and another who fitted the lining so badly it felt like you had an apple sewn between your shoulder blades.  Some couldn't come up with a suitable leather for the job at all, and some were just plain silly with their pricing too, no doubt assuming gullibility - perhaps they thought we didn't speak to anyone else!

Thankfully these woes are all in the Past, and the Timeline Avoidance Stabiliser has been set to make sure we can never go there again.  Indeed, the guys we finally ended up using are so much better than the others that it's analogous to reversing the polarity of the neutron flow of the Doctor's Jacket Project.  Sorry, had to squeeze a fanboy reference in somehow!  But they are truly a world apart from some of the previous people.

As far as getting it Right goes - that was relatively easy, although took a lot of actual time to do.  Initially we only had to work from pictures and video, and it must be said that a surprisingly accurate (in hindsight) pattern was made from those alone!  However, as time went on, a personal inspection revised some small details, a measurement or two, and a genuine original WW2 uniform jacket of the right pattern was bought from a German memorabilia collector and totally iced the cake.  The finished result is absolutely right.   Oh - bit of trivia for you;  did you know the jacket on display at the Brighton Exhibition WASN'T Christopher Eccleston's screen jacket?  Hint: Buttons. ;-)

I suppose I'd better not officially claim that it's 100% accurate in case the number of stitches is different or something, but in my personal opinion, with my now ridiculous familiarity with this jacket, what we have IS 100% accurate.

Which brings me to my final note...  I realised something a week or two back;  I am now, as I write this (08/02/2006), the World's Leading Authority On The Doctor's Jacket!  WOW.  You see, no person living, out of over six BILLION humans on the planet, knows it as well as I do.  The tailors who originally made them in WWII have all passed away.  And if any haven't they don't have the knowledge of the recent history of the ones used on the 2005 TV show and the minor changes made.  Nobody at the BBC knows the precise stitching, materials, and assembly as I do, nor the distant history of them.  So.  WOW I say again.  I'm the World's Leading Authority on SOMETHING.  OK, it's hardly a big deal in global terms, but it couldn't be more appropriate for me as a Doctor Who fan since I was old enough to watch it on TV, and besides - do you have any idea how difficult it is to become the world's leading authority on ANYTHING these days??

JD - 08/02/06




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