Fist off let me say that I’ve been critical of the Crystal Skull jacket in the past. It’s just not my favorite Indiana Jones jacket. Most of the details of this jacket had nothing to do with Tony himself. He built the jacket on spec. The major thing that we all know that he did contribute was changing the collar from the existing design so that it would lay flat. I’m sure that there were also many “invisible” upgrades to the existing design as well to make the jacket more functional. I tried one on and hey, it looked like a CS jacket, no bones about it. I’ll talk about the quality later.
Now what I personally was really interested in was his new “Raiders” jacket. Tony’s jacket is a winner. The first thing that struck me is that his jacket was a cousin to the G&B Expedition. There were many Wested Raiders to be seen at the Queen Mary, and the TN & the Expedition seemed like they shared the same bloodline and the Wested seemed a bit like another species. That’s my honest opinion.
I took my Expo. off and started comparing details with the TN Raiders and they were the same, only different. Now, was the TN Raiders an exact duplicate of the hero jacket worn by Ford in Raiders? I don’t know. Quite frankly I don’t care if it is or isn’t. What’s important (to me) is that the jacket captures the essence of the Raiders jacket. The TN does it in spades. One thing that the TN does do for instance (and possibly better than other jackets), is that it “wears off the shoulders” just like a Raiders jacket. Nobody would ever design a jacket to do that. It’s a flaw in the Raiders jacket (of which there are many). However, Tony’s jacket is comfortable and there are no ill effects from his jacket being able to emulate the effect. Ironically, he uses a lining that is made out of the same material that the original Expos had before G&B changed it. It’s different than what he uses for his CS jacket.
Here’s the deal with Tony’s quality. It’s of the highest caliber. Is it higher than a Gibson & Barnes Expedition? No. I would rank them at about the same. You can make a jacket to a certain high standard and that’s it. You can’t really go higher. According to Einstein, you can’t go faster than the speed of light. Han Solo was full of ####. There is no “point five past light speed”. Both jackets have reached that point. That doesn’t mean that they aren’t very different from each other, obviously. Quite frankly, I believe that many here were blown away with the quality of Tony’s CS jacket because they had never seen quality of that caliber before.
Now aesthetics can be a real dividing line. Some people have been critical of G&B jackets because they don’t “distress” easily. I would say that they’re guilty as charged. But it’s not really a crime. Many people prefer that. I talked to some of them this weekend. They’re just a little less vocal about it than others on this board. They want to wear the thing to dinner, not go grave robbing in it. It has also been proven that the “distressed” look can be achieved with a G&B with elbow grease. On the flip side Tony has always offered jackets in predistressed hide (as well as “new” hides). In the past I’ve said that I personally didn’t care much for the CS hide. That is still the case. However, his “Raiders” predistressed hide (the one that some of you are calling “dino hide”) is the bees knees. I was skeptical at first like many of you, but I now believe that Tony cracked the code.
Let’s discus what this leather is. It is a lambskin that has gone through an enzyme tanning process. In the process the hide loses real estate. It tightens up. You get some of those hide “ripples” or “scales”, or whatever you want to call them. The hide shrinkage means that this leather is expensive (btw). This hide was very prevalent in the eighties. Avirex made predistressed A-2’s & G-1’s out of them. When Tony looked at the films (no to mention what he had in hand), this is what he saw. It made sense. It fit the time period that these films were made. (Ironically, this leather may become the “holy grail” of leather to the Indiana Jones community in the future, but it would make you a laughingstock to the historical A-2 & G-1 crowd of today). Now that I knew what I was looking for, I saw it too when I looked at the dvd’s yesterday.
These “scales” are prevalent in every Indiana Jones jacket (except for CS). You just have to look closely. They are especially prevalent in the Raiders jacket. They are definitely apparent on the back panel. How could this have been missed for so long? For one thing, these “scales” (for lack of a better term), are not uniformly spread out over the leather in the movie jackets. I remember this when I saw those old Avirex jackets. Some were very “scaley” and others had the scales in certain sections of the jacket. I confirmed this yesterday as well. Years ago I traded a Peters Brothers fedora to Michaelson for a US Wings lambskin jacket, which I gave to my father. I took a look at it yesterday and sure enough, those scales were on certain sections of leather. The hide that Tony has procured is very uniform. It’s an expensive hide. It is nicer than what is on the Wings jacket. I personally love the hide that Tony procured, but it might be too "good" (uniform) for some on this board. Getting back to the subject of how can this have been missed, there aren’t many natural light shots of the jacket in Raiders. In the ones that are shot in natural light, the jacket is covered in @#$%. The camera also loses detail. Lee Keppler confirms that back in 86 or 87, the “bellhop” jackets that Peter sent him were made from this leather. If you still don’t believe that the Raiders jacket was made from this material, or you don’t like that type of hide, that’s just as well. Tony also offers the jacket in a variety of smooth hides as well. He'll also change any jacket detail that you want.
On a personal level, Tony is a helluva guy. He confirmed to me that his personal “Raiders” jacket is his favorite jacket. He makes a helluva product. It would take a helluva product (his Raiders jacket) at this point for me to even consider getting another Indiana Jones jacket (I’m so pleased with my various Expeditions). I guess I don’t really need two kidneys do I?
