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Razor1986 Just A Dead Man to assess the new jacket
Hi there,
Somebody rang?
I've looked at the pictures and to it seems that the jacket overall is an improvement compared to other jackets that I've seen in terms of material, construction, lining etc. However with that said, there are a few things that I do notice. Especially take notice of points 1, 2 and 9:
1) The shape of the jacket doesn't appear to have this curve at the sides. If you look at the original jacket you should see the jacket becoming tighter at the waist and flaring out again at the bottom hem. From what I can see in these pictures there's only this inward curve at the armits, but not much of a curve outwards (if at all) when you go downward, which looks rather straight if you'd ask me. Again, that's what I see from the pictures, of which some are taken from an angle, so I might be wrong here. (Awaiting more pictures of the jacket, yes.
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2) Also, there still seems to be an issue with pointy shoulders. I find it hard to explain why the shoulders on the original look the way the look and look different on the replica. Whatever it is, the original jacket doesn't have pointy shoulders, but very rounded ones, yet it does have set-in sleeves set in at an angle. Perhaps it also matters how the armholes are cut and how wide it is at the armits and the chest and also how the sleeves are cut at the end that gets attached to the arm holes. The original UGG jacket is pretty wide at the chest.
3) I feel that the waist pockets should be tilted more.
4) The suede seems to look pretty nice. I presume that the colors of the suede and the stitch thread are copied from the samples that were sent to Indy?
5) The color of the ribbed fabric seems to be too bright and red/maroon. It's actually pretty dark brown on the original, much like - if not identical to - the color of the stitch thread that's used. I think that it's most probably the material of the ribbed fabric together with the lighting conditions that make it look lighter and reddish. If I take a picture of the jacket it almost always shows up as maroonish/reddish brown, while in normal daylight it's actually dark brown, with some grey (again: most likely because of the lighting).
6) The color of the fur still seems a little on the bright side. I'd advise a more darker beige color, but without a color sample it's hard to get it right anyway.
7) The zippers seem to be a size 8 and with correct collors, so that's nice. Too bad that the sliders on the waist pockets are just the regular ones. Can't see the buttons (both the knobs and the caps) so I don't know about the shape and sizes of those.
8) As for the contruction of the collar, I can't tell much about it. It does somewhat replicate the collar of the original, but I don't like how the fur seems to be simply turned over the edge and stitched at the back side of the collar. I'm not sure that's the case with Rick's jacket in the series, but to be fair, I don't know exactly how they've done it either.
9) I just noticed, I think Indy is working from some kind of template instead of using my measurements to get the correct shape of the jacket. I don't understand how otherwise the curved edge of the suede at the armpits right beneath the triple stitched chest piece is only like 1,5 cm long instead of 4,5 cm. My files for both the L and XL clearly say 4,5 cm. Perhaps it would be 4 cm on an M and S, but nowhere near 1,5 cm. Not getting measurements like these correct, will get you a different shape, which will also influence things like pulling and pointy shoulders etc.
I don't know what measurements are used, but I think this all has to do with this made-to-measure mindset on which Indy is pretty much set. I mean, made-to-measure is great, but not when you're still trying to find out how the jacket model should actually look like, hence my advocation for using ONLY the measurements of standard sizes that I have provided (which are L and XL). I don't see why you can't use these measurements as a template for this jacket and work out your made-to-measure from there. Right now it feels like there's a lot of muddling going on, starting from some sort of standard template (with custom measurements provided by the customer) and fitting in specific details in the design later on to make it look like the original jacket. This approach also makes it hard if not impossible to actually have an accurate jacket.
I've said it before and I will repeat myself: a lot of these inaccuracies can be prevented, by just sticking to the information that I've provided for the standard sizes L and XL. It's not hard to read. It's in english, it has pretty pictures with measurements all over the place.
If a jacket is ever going to be made following my measurements, only then will I be able to tell about the pointy arms issue. The measurements on the L and XL serve as perfect templates for people who normally wear these sizes and I don't think it's too difficult to figure out the measurements for an M and S as well.