Summer Special on Custom Made Leather Pants

Custom-made leather pant orders placed for Fall 2010 & confirmed with a deposit between now and Monday,  July 12th, (or until we are booked solid, whichever comes first!) will be discounted 20% from the regular custom-made price.  This applies to any regular custom-made men's pants, in a selection of our very best selling black and brown cowhides.

  Limited Specialty treatments will also be offered during this special,  prices vary accordingly.

(Details on the Summer Special Here)

 

 

& Ladies, womens custom-made Italian Lambskin pants (in our classic clean cuts only) will also be 20% off any orders confirmed with a deposit by July 12th.  A range of colors is available in our Italian Lambskin.

So, avoid the Fall crunch and plan ahead. 

Please call for an appointment or email us for more information.

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Summer Special on Custom Made Leather Pants

Custom Made Wedding Bodice-part 2

First the fun part  of re-doing the front foundation.  (PITA) I go back to the drawing board to my first instinctual direction (doh!)

Re-cut and re-trace one front panel and trace all the boning points.  Using a piece of the stretch silk I apply it to the twill along the boning marks.  Because of the stretch I don't need to worry about adding room- or perfect stitching.   I use a rough cut piece & trim it later.

Because of the chiffon I do have to worry about the fabric shredding if boning isn't pushed through carefully.  This stuff is sharp!  I lightly melt the edges of the boning,  being very careful not to allow carbon buildup.  Which has potential to be ugly & messy at all times.  (At least no bleeding yet,  which is a given.  I don"t think it counts if you don't bleed on it at some point!)

Then the crossways boning, using what is really the wrong size twill tape (because its here) I make casings over the applied boning- it will be inside, under several layers.  Slip in the boning & trim.  This layer is the lining,  as well as the foundation.

 I'm a little off here,  but it ain't leather - I have not worked in fabric in years- not like this!

 Now no puckering or buckling inside when curving with the body.

Sew the straps to the front bodice:

And layout the lace:

Here I am using a medallion from the center of the tablecloth.  Centering & mirroring as well as possible,  the cloth is not symmetrical,  at all.   Overall it is several inches off.  Still amazing  being entirely stitched by hand and washed a bunch.   I eye it.

The center of the cloth was the most stained.  I cut around this where possible,  not too concerned.  The stains add to the depth of the cloth,  I may spray parts of it with some tea when it is done. Depends.

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Custom Made Wedding Bodice-part 2

Buying Status or Luxury?

The other day I was up on 47th street and there was a little crowd knotted up on the street. I worked my way through the group, almost all guys, with their cameras out. 

And there it was; the most amazing apple-green,  iridescent,  two-tone Lamborghini.  The color was out-of-this-world.  I wondered where it was headed,  it had non-resident 20 day temporary tags on it. (Who knew there were such things?  I rarely drive & never in the city any more, so I am well out of the loop here.) It was funny to see it parked in a crowded business district in the middle of the morning, very incongruous,  leaving the impression at it wanted to get into a traffic jam really fast!  (It certainly was creating one very quickly!)

A beautiful vehicle,  fast - and always limited edition, since Lamborghini makes well under 3000 cars in a year.  I do hope it's going somewhere it can cut loose a little!

This is luxury & status,  with that color-bumping it up even more!  A very precision crafted, finely designed, hand-assembled & finished and renowned for  speed & performance.  Each one is test driven on real roads when completed.

So,  if you are able to buy one of these,  you are certainly getting what you pay for….

Then there's fashion.
Unfortunately, all too often the luxury/status/designer/label thing has become just another term for for big marketing & big manufacturing.

Case in point: Here is a used fabric Chanel Camellia.  Just a plain fabric one.  A bit beat. "Pre-owned".

It sold for $249.00.   I don't believe this variation of a Chanel camellia goes for much more than $300.00 new.  It's the tweed and raffia ones that run up to $600.00. Those need to be hand-stitched, at least to some extent.  This one - not so much.  Probably hundreds, if not thousands of these get made. 

There are flower makers here in NYC who do beautiful work of this sort,  mostly by hand & at a much higher caliber than this particular flower,  but they could never demand the price.  Meanwhile the real French flower specialists do work like this:

Needless to say these were not priced like Chanel,  having no "label",  just impeccable quality.

I realize this may not be the best comparison,  Chanel does have a resale value!  There are many "status" companies who market very, very mass produced items as status/exclusive/luxury when the only thing status/exclusive/luxury about them is the price… 

It's unfortunate that in fashion, particularly,  marketing of the label  has become so very confused with the actual quality & exclusivity,  and at the same time it sort of nurtures insecurity…this came into scary clear focus with this article on fashion bloggers,  and the keeping up with the jones-es pressure...Ugh!  I am hopeful that we are starting to move away from this, with so many choices and so many talented, independent creators now easily able to reach their audience.  The dynamic is evolving! 

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Buying Status or Luxury?

Custom- Made Wedding Bodice, part 1

OK. a little delayed in this, but still going to set this up in increments...

Bodice number 2 wins! It suits not only the overall feeling of the fabric, but it also allows for wonderful usage of the medallions.  Number 1 would become a nightmare, especially given my time frame and the very limited hours I have (and want!) to put into this project. I am also a sucker for historical periods & costumes and this is a bit of a Titania variation.

So, for the foundation, I found a nice brushed twill weave cotton that matched the linen beautifully, then I saw a great nude-beige denim that looked incredible under the cut-work, but it was way to heavy weight so I go for the twill.

Back in the studio I re-think this,  I have to find something in that color,  but much lighter in weight. Back out I go & this is my solution:

You can see the subtle contrast between the linen over the twill by itself vs. with a layer of  taupe-y-nude silk chiffon in between the two at the top.  So this is what I'm doing.

The silk-chiffon gets basted to the twill,  this silk has some stretch in it,  (not what I wanted or needed but for the color I will deal. ) It must be handled carefully because the stretch could pucker between the layers if not carefully basted down.

For the front and back panels the twill is cut in two layers one for the outside, which will have the silk & linen over it and one as the foundation layer.  Side panels will be single layer (with silk overlay) & twill is bias cut, for a little extra give & cling.  Here I use the stretch in the silk. (Side panel is shown from the  inside.)

All the basting includes stitching and reference marks.  Silk is trimmed down later.

I had planned on stitching the boning directly to the inside foundation.  This is how that worked out:

Looks OK from the inner side that will be facing the bodice layer (on left), but like hell on the side that will be facing the body. Its not so visible in the photo on the right, but when the foundation is curved as it will be when on the body,  all sorts of puckering appears.  The boning itself is not the good English ridgiline, (is that even made anymore?) but a Chinese version which is a bit less pliable and flexible and will not take on any curve at all when pressed - none of which helps here.

This part gets a re-do.  I had actually thought about doing this a different way at first, then  spaced on it.  So, this goes back to the initial plan.  End of first installment.

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Custom- Made Wedding Bodice, part 1

Now for something completely... not leather!

Over the next few weeks or so I've decided to attempt to chronicle the design & creation of something completely different here, my wedding dress.

(& Danny, don't look at the pictures!)

I have been wanting to focus on the custom-made process for some time now, and have collected photos, and started writing, but time gets quite crunched during projects and I have many starts to many projects, but it's almost overwhelming for me to put them together, especially since time only permits me to do it when a project is done and out of the studio at which point I 'm kinda done with it and off the the next thing!


I do hope to compile a lot of this ( focused on the leather) once the whole blog gets it's scheduled work over starting next month.  Maybe I'll even get some help to do it… But right now, since it gets a bit quieter going into the summer and I am actually able to spend a little time each day on this and this is the type of work I have not done in ages, I thought it would be a good way to start working out a way to present "the process"… & forgive me if it winds up being in dribs & drabs. I am going to try and do it as it happens.


Ok, the start of this dress is the fabric. (Yes, you read that right- not leather, a rooftop party in high summer is just not the place!)


I am starting with a large rectangular antique cutwork linen tablecloth. The linen is a very tight smooth weave, nothing like it exists on the market today as far as I can tell, the closest thing out there is true Irish Linen & it is not even close.  The cloth is very heavily embroidered, by hand probably in China, probably over 50 years ago. It is almost entirely cutwork, very little solid linen remains and I won't be using much of it. The tablecloth belonged to Danny's Mom. It was very much used and has been washed - a lot.  It's really wonderful.

Ok, now design.  I was completely perplexed.  For myself,  I always tend to go for comfort first, but at the same time, heck,  it's my wedding!  And since I'm making it I want to show off a bit.  I also want it to be sexy and fun and most of all unique.  Also at this point I am still not quite sure of using that table cloth...so I play around.

So fiddling with the rectangle of the cloth, I get this... very sloppy, but wanted to see the way it hangs.
I like the points. The gathering will have to be figured out. May or may not work. 

I couldn't quite get a handle on what I wanted for the bodice, probably because it's for me ,since I never have this problem when creating for other people.  Again my first instinct is for  comfort.
So I do this:

Not too bad, but what the heck am I gonna do with that lace? And all those seams? And trying to match the embroidery as well?  Since this will need some actual fabric added to make it work. Yikes!

Next: Switch gears, comfort be damned!  Plus this give me a place to work with the medallions in the lace that run through the center of the cloth,  the Elizabethan corseted bodice has a nice clean flat area to play with.

Still, me,  I'm confused (still wanting comfort - D. wants sexy, btw.)  so I send this pix to some girfriends. (crowd sourcing a wedding dress?)  Guess Which?  I'm kinda excited now.

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Now for something completely... not leather!

Dissappointed, Angry & Disgusted...

I am so absolutely sickened by the news that just continues to get worse and worse surrounding the oil spill.  It makes my head spin and my gut go cold.  Reading today,  how the government agency that was supposed to police and approve permits,  instead just enables & allows outright the outright flaunting of any and all regulations and allows drilling without proper approval & permits - ignoring and abusing their own scientists' research and recommendations to set it up so we...all Americans,  get it up right 
the rear for the sake of oil. 

Then some dumbA Alaskan Senatornamed Lisa Murkowski blocks the bill to raise the liability 
cap on the oil companies clean up bill...

To borrow the other dumbA's  (What the heck is it with Alaska?) phrase,  perhaps a truly deserving  "target" list should be set up to encompass the oil companies, the oil rig owners, Haliburtan, Transocean,  the M.M.S. (which sounds like it should be shut down and investigated immediately.) and bozos like Lisa Murkowski.

Sorry for the rant,  but when the heck are we gonna revolt???

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Dissappointed, Angry & Disgusted...

SPECTRE Style

Somehow the villains always look the coolest.  The best tailoring, the sharpest style.
It's why we've all emulated them all for years.  Besides, edgeless gets very, very boring, very quickly.

I was so very glad when frilly girlie-girl dresses went out of favor in NYC - my eyes were burning from the saccharine!   Things are so much better when they bite!   But, I was a bit ahead of the game with my womenswear & now I'm doing mostly menswear.   It's great really 'cause guys get it!

Case in point,   Jackets (Leather here, of course) fitted,  sharp tailoring,  edgy,  tough,  straddling fashion, fetish,  militaristic and of course my favorite,  Bond Villains! (Hey, the Bad Bond Girls were ALWAYS the best Bond Girls! I need to find more of them!)

Here I present, The dangerous Nehru Jacket.  Finely tailored, in a foreboding  ( yet deceptively fine & very light weight )  matte black lambskin.  Incredible, if I do say so myself!  Very Dr. No,  no?

Many Thanks to my customer,  John,  for posing for pix, one day I hope to get getter ones,  I have an

on-the-fly-studio set up now...perfect for those mastermind villains!

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SPECTRE Style

Eat KFC & fight Cancer???

I got this in the mail today:

This is a WTF? Moment. 
I cannot imagine who thought this was a good idea,  or if  The Susan G. Komen fund is either:

a) desperate for cash

b) cynical beyond belief

c) just plain old stupid 

In any case they should fire their marketing arm.

Designing a marketing tie in like this is the absolutely the height of irresponsibility. 
It also completely diminishes what they are here to do.  Which in a nutshell is to improve women's heath and treatment.

Promoting tie in to a sodium and grease packed meal like KFC's is WRONG.  Obesity,  yes,  that'll help your breast cancer outcomes...
It also targets the people who need least to be targeted with this kind of garbage, people who eat like sh*t anyhow, who more than likely already have more than their fair share of heart disease, diabetes, you name it.

This country is already such a mess with our obesity rates,  I don't see how we will ever stem the tide if this type of practice keeps up.  On top of all the garbage there is out there marketed as food. 
Yesterday I saw a woman, standing, on the street. she was not old, but she had to lean against the building to support her considerable weight which I would venture to guess to be at least 600 pounds.  Seriously one of the largest ambulatory people I have ever seen in NYC.  Less than 20 years ago you NEVER saw this in NYC,  not even close.  

Our bodies are not built to support this. (neither is our transportation system)  HOW do you get around?  I cannot even imagine the limitations (not to mention health) issues this forces on people.  
& It's much worse outside of the city.  (It is very hard to sit in a restaurant in places like rural PA and have any sort appetite for food when seated across from people this size- and it's about impossible to avoid.)

I felt for the woman on the street,  but...at the same time it's hard to figure how someone gets to that point.  And then,  how on earth do you turn it back?  It's freeking hard to lose weight!

I am no chubby basher.  I prefer a curvy figure over an anorexic one any time, but I doubt 300-600 lbs can ever be considered simply overweight for most women.  That's a serious health issue.
 

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Eat KFC & fight Cancer???

Death by Fashion

In NYC the other day somebody died by low-hanging pants. 

(I had to add this photo- yes we actually see this (and lower) in NYC, midtown, Herald Square -  uh... like 25 years after the fact...it's like a mohawk - 35 years after the dole... )

I have to say here that I have always wondered when this would happen.

For way too many years, there has been this low-hanging pants thing going on and while you see it less and less in the city, it seems to get more and more extreme each time you do.

It's to the point where the pants are belted around under the butt &  up a just trifle in front, since it ain't gravity holding them up! And bizarrely it's a look almost always affected by (grown?) men.
Also nobody seems to pay much attention to the brand of underwear they are exposing- as they did in the old days. It was a big deal back when....

Anyhow, I've always thought, "What if you have to RUN! ???"

Well it finally happened. Guy robs an apartment and has to flee down fire escape. Pant fall. Crash. Guy gone.

Has a "fashion" statement ever added to the annals of the Darwin awards?
There are other types of fashion victims, but Low-Hanging Pants, really becomes Darwin.

LHP are nowhere near as dramatic (or gory) a statement as blowing your nose and blowing your brains out. (Italy, 15th century & the rage for blond hair - probably a costume history myth, but still.. )

Or as quirky as what was the madness followed by death (by mercury) that inspired the character of the "Mad Hatter".  That was more a workplace hazard, and would be an OSHA thing today.

Or as merveilluese-ly,  tragic as clingy, wet muslin dresses in stone mansions in winter. (France & England early 19th century) Pneumonia anyone?

Or as "elegant" as the pallor achieved by sucking on real lead pencils slightly later. (shudder) These last two are pretty Darwin.

And, Thankfully no where near as hideous nor as finally game changing as the combination of voluminous skirts and flame.  (Santiago Chile in 1863 & the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist fire where the seamstress's long skirts hampered escape & exacerbated the danger.)

And face it, death by Low-Hanging Pants will never leave a segment of society reeling, as Isadora Duncan's did in 1927 via a scarf caught in a car's tire.

The list of fashion victims goes on and on, but there are not too many that really fit into the Darwin category (improving the gene pool by removing yourself from it)  Since they are mostly historical, many are horrific tragedies and they are often unknowingly inflicted, by self or otherwise.

So, if you do know of any, particularly modern instances,  morbid curiosity compels me to ask you to leave a comment.

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Death by Fashion

Men's Pinstripe Leather "Clint" Jeans

A masculine version of my stitched pinstripe "Clint" jeans ( Yes, really a men's style...but I knew that.)

Heavyweight, full grain black cowhide.  Freehand stitching.  Hand-laced details.  Convertible zipped leg vents.

The Good and the Bad... (sorry Ugly)

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Men's Pinstripe Leather "Clint" Jeans

Rolex Leather Aviator Jacket Commission

Here is a recent custom commission of the Rolex Jacket, featured here  and here.  (Originally commissioned by Rolex for an advertisement.)

This one has  a real shearling fur collar and is a functional portrait collar cut, rather than the extreme (great looking, but very constricting for actual wear) off-the-shoulder cut of the editorial model in the advert.

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Rolex Leather Aviator Jacket Commission

More Custom Made Leather Boot Pants

Continuing on with the new projects...The boot pants:

A gentleman with amazing taste and a ton of style, commissioned these.  The original concept was simple, but once I got started with the materials,  the bootmaker and the fittings,  the project took its proper form and the real construction and technical specifications took shape.

For these pants to be truly wearable and functional (and still look freaking amazing) a lot of articulation had to be built in to allow for sitting,  bending & movement. The leather is not stretch leather and I wanted a fashionable and masculine look.

I want these pants to elicit unconscious (and appreciative) double takes.  My client can carry them off.  As streetwear,  As fashion.  As a statement.  Not too many people can do that these days.  Confidence & real personal style,  is a powerful combination...

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More Custom Made Leather Boot Pants