Leather Costume - Modified Jacket

The next part of the leather costume was the leather jacket.  I suggested starting with an existing jacket and modifying it, so we went to Goodwill and picked up a black leather jacket.  Being a motorcycle jacket, it had the following features:

• leather, to protect against road rash in case of fall
• tight snaps at wrists and elastic at the waist to prevent wind from getting in and ballooning the coat
• double closures: a CF zipper to close the coat, and a double-breasted snapped closure to keep wind from getting in at the zipper.

It was very 1980s style, with raglan sleeves.  Since my client is big boned, the cuffs were too tight to snap shut on him, but the rest fit. 

the jacket after I removed the elastic at the waist Some chalk marks on the shoulders, from the first fitting. He's wearing the pants.

INSPIRATION: TYRION LANNISTER

Peter Dinklage as Tyrion Lannister in Game of Thrones, wearing perforated black leather over dark red.

How awesome would it be to be an actor, and have people make you costumes that fit perfectly all the time, and build you a wardrobe of unique, interesting--oh wait: I sew, so I can do that for myself!  ;) 

In Game of Thrones, Tyrion Lannister is a much-reviled but nevertheless decent aristocrat, who drinks too much, pays for sex, and hogs all the good lines in the series.  His costumes are generally leather (to distinguish him from the more effete aristocrats), finely made (to distinguish him from the burlier wild Viking style characters), and restrained in color (because he's a man of taste not ostentation).  It's clear that the costume designers worked out a good basic doublet pattern for him and made it up in several variations, as you can see. 

Both these costumes feature the same lovely perforated leather, most likely laser cut in the swirling patterns.  I don't have a laser cutter, alas, but I do want to get a similar leather-lace look. 

I also like the metal clasps used to close the doublet, and the epaulette-like shoulder things.  And I like the closed up neck, which looks protective. 

First off, I removed the front zipper so I'd have access to the inner construction of the coat. 

Screenshot: Episode 3.08. Red leather over green

LAPELS

I knew right away I would take full advantage of the double layers already present on the jacket.  I was thinking of Tudor menswear, the wide-set revers and broad shoulders, and of 1820's men's suits with their broad shoulders and nipped waists. 

To start, I pulled the outer layer open and covered it with perforated brown leather to highlight its lines and cover its snaps. 

To the left, you can see how I traced the shape of the lapel on paper to make a pattern.  Below, how I cut the brown leather pieces in that shape. 

The first time I cut two right lapels, forgetting to turn the suede sides together. My second attempt was more successful.

I wanted to use the sueded side of the leather, because it made more of a contrast with the shiny black.  So on the non-suede side, I used silver Sharpie to draw a grid, and used that grid as the basis for my holes.  I make sure not to cut holes where the original jacket has silver snaps, because I want to cover them up!  This process was time consuming and hard on my hands, but the finished look, while not as ornate as Tyrion's, was pretty unique and cool. 

Sharpie lines make a grid, and circles mark location of snaps to remain covered

cutting out the patterns

the front side

Then, pressing bobby pins into service again, I pinned the leather-lace onto the lapels of the jacket and sewed.  This was hard, too, since the jacket was heavy and unwieldy, and the corners tight, but I went slow and steady and got it done.  As a final touch, I took some iridescent brown seed beads from my stash and sewed them at intersections of the grid, to add a touch more detail, a la Yoshitaka Amano.  You'll see them in a later picture.  I had to tack the lapels in their open position to keep them from flopping around. 

Sewing the leather-lace in place

The enhanced lapels!

EPAULETS

Then, thinking that the raglan cut of the sleeves too dated to the 1980's, I decided to accentuate the shoulders with sleeve caps or epaulets, and what better material than faux fur?  Of course... there's an internal logic to all this madness: fur covering the shoulders is to keep the sword arm dry!  ;)

First, I cut the faux fur and some black lining fabric in rounded triangles.  Faux fur everywhere!  I sewed the pieces right sides together along the bottom points.  When I turned them, the fur was trapped in the seams. 

So I used a pin to pull the ends of the fur out of the seams.  Below, some in-progress pics:

On the inside, I used scissors to trim excess fur from the seam allowances, giving the knitted base a close shave.  These scissors with the yellow tape on them have slightly curved blades, so I could use them to get pretty close to the stitching without piercing anything.  (After doing so, I saw Peter Lappin's Instagram post about how he does it with electric trimmers before sewing... clever!)

Then I took some black suede and hand-stitched it to the top of the fur, adding brown suede details (cut-out bits from making the lapels). I think they ended up looking like lacing, like the thing was sewn with brown suede strips. 

Now, the edges of the fur were choppy and unnatural looking, like a fresh haircut always is, so I spent some time with my scissors, thinning and layering until they looked like the fur had grown in that shape.  This was finicky work... I didn't want any strand of fur on the edge to be the same length as its neighbor.  Eventually I got the edges to match the center in terms of how they reflected light. 

The finished epaulets, and in the corner, a glimpse of my sketch for the jacket...

The front being still open from when I removed the zipper, I went into the lining to get at the shoulders, and discovered an interesting surprise: the raglan shoulder pad was sewn to the inside through the use of a strip of lining fabric actually piercing the pad, and being sewn to the seam allowances of the jacket on either side!  Hopefully, these pictures make some kind of sense, since I don't think that sentence did...

Here's the raglan shoulder pad. The black strip is going through a hole in the pad.

The black strip emerges on the other side and is tacked to the seam allowance below it.

In order to get to the leather of the shoulder top, I had to unsew one end of the strip and remove the shoulder pad.   Then I was able to hand-sew the epaulet in place:

It was tough on my hands, trying to pierce the leather so much, but there was little hope of getting Boudica's head into that leather beast!  When I was done, I put the shoulder pad back in its impaled position. 

CLOSURES

As for the inner layer, the final closure, I used some neat clasps for the front:

positioning the clasp

The back of the clasp is inside the jacket, and reinforced by interfacing canvas.

I re-sewed the front shut, and criss-crossed the top to make a more aristocratic high collar.  My client had selected several metal or metallic buttons he liked, and I used one large one to close the collar.  I hand-sewed the buttonhole with waxed thread:

A final rub with some leather conditioner, and it was ready to go.  I think the final effect is quite nice!