As far as jackets go, this one is top notch. The leather is simply stunning. I own a number of leather jackets, all of varying style and quality. I’ve owned several others over the course of my adult life. I’ve paid upwards of eight hundred dollars for a high quality leather jackets, so I sort of know what I’m talking about when it comes to leather garments in this price ranger. I have never before seen and felt a jacket or leather product with such high grade leather. It is so incredibly soft and pliable, it feels like butter. It smells great! The texture and feel has an overall uniformity that is very pleasing. The color match is great through all components.
The fit of the jacket is also great. This was made to measurements of my torso. One would expect any such undertaking to produce desirable results. However, I can say from personal experience that providing your measurements to the maker does not in any way guarantee a good (much less perfect) fit. The sleeves are the perfect length for me, and the chest fits snugly in all the right places. I don’t really know much fashion lingo, so I can only assure you in my lay terms that this jacket fits like a glove.
The lining of the jacket is also top quality. I would have thought that an invisible detail such as this would either be overlooked entirely, or simply thrown together haphazardly. No such shortcut was taken. The lining is beautifully made with quality stitching and material. The material inside the lining feels soft to the touch. It’s great.
From an engineering perspective, the jacket also receives the highest of marks. The mechanism for attaching the buttons is both ingenious, and no doubt historically accurate. Considering that this jacket is intended to reproduce the techniques available in the 1930’s for jacket making, they spared no expense when it came to the small details. The small straps and buckles at the wrists are also a great touch, executed with style and class. The overall stitching and construction is also top of the line. This looks like the type of quality that you would find on the rack at Nordstrom’s, or some other high end clothier. Nothing about this jacket looks hand made. It’s all very professionally cut, assembled, and stitched.
As a final note on the “garment” aspect of the Jacket, I have to add that there’s a wonderful heft to it. This is not a wimpy parka. No sir. This jacket is meant to take some serious punishment. It feels solid. It feels like a quality jacket.
As a replica, this jacket is at the absolute top of its game. Like so many other things, I am no aficionado of The Rocketeer. I consider myself a casual fan of the movie, who has enjoyed it many times over the years. I have not really done any extensive research on the various components of the costume, but I have always had a hungry interest in it. With that said, it would not make much sense for me to run around claiming how accurate this jacket is. After all, I don’t know what “accurate” is. So I’ll defer to the facts I have assembled surrounding the creation of this jacket.
From what I have gathered, Disney auctioned off many props and costumes from the film a few years back on ebay. The pieces auctioned included a rocket pack or two, a helmet, some stunt jodhpurs, and one of the jackets. A fellow collector won the jacket, but at great cost. My suspicion is that somehow the jacket made its way into the hands of a couple of very passionate Rocketeer collectors, who then went on to reproduce the jacket for themselves. I recently confirmed that the jacket was patterned from a studio Disney jacket by a leather shop in London.
One of the buttons from the original jacket was either molded, or reverse engineered, or perhaps even sourced out. Since this review was written, I have learned that The buttons are custom cast from the Disney buttons.
The color of the leather was matched as close as humanly possible. Having never seen the original next to a replica, I cannot comment on the accuracy. However, knowing what sticklers for accuracy my friends in the Rocketeer community are, I must believe that they went to every length to get the color right. One of the men behind the project explained to me that every attempt has been made to reproduce the leather color. The original jacket is discolored because of ultra-violet exposure, presumably from being on display at Disney World. They checked the reverse side of the bib for the original color of this masterpiece.
Having one of the original jackets on hand must have made reverse engineering much easier than traditional methods, which often include resorting to screen captures and pictures. Anyone with any time in front of screen grabs knows that they are often deceiving, and hard to interpret. So, it is my belief that it would not be humanly possible to produce a more accurate replica of this jacket than the one I hold in my hands.
So, to recap, this jacket is not only a stunning piece of engineering and design, but it is also an indescribably accurate replica of the one seen on screen.
And it’s damn comfy too!