Club Obi Wan

While lurking earlier this year, I'm sure I read a piece about Lee Kepler and his involvement with the Last Crusade jacket prototype.
Now I can't find it. Anyone have the story or know where the post is? thanks

Lee produced a Raiders jacket as a fan and sold it via magazines (it was made by the G&B company who do a brilliant Indy jacket today, but not from that pattern). That jacket ended up in Lucas's archives and was used as the basis for the LC AND the Indy 4 jacket. Apparently HF and two costume designers preferred it to the original jacket. Go figure...

How did he do that without all sorts of legal action against him?
Or was his work licensed by Lucasfilm?

Kevin Anderson wrote:How did he do that without all sorts of legal action against him?
Or was his work licensed by Lucasfilm?

The same way vendors do today by calling it an adventure jacket or making a statement that they are not licensed or affiliated with Lucasfilm. It was Lucasfilm representatives (though they did not identify themselves as such [and I'm going by memory of old posts here so this needs to be verified]) who contacted him to make the jacket with snaps on the stormflap (again, if memory serves) for them so they obviously didn't have a problem with what he was doing.

They also approached him to make the LC jackets for the film, but due to the numbers they wanted and the turn around time required, he sent them to Peter instead for the work.

Regards! Michaelson

Well that is very cool of them then. I thought they'd jealously (or greedily) guard that sort of thing. Perhaps not so much today after so many years, but back in the 80's/90's I thought it would be seriously frowned upon. Glad it wasn't.

Not as much as one would think at that time. The internet was a 'thing of the future', and the demand for reproductions of items was pretty much contained to a few 'crazies' like us. When the internet finally caught on, and CS came on the horizon is when the iron gloves were put on by the LucasFilm lawyers, and things got REALLY tight.

Some makers (like G&B) were proactive, and never called their jacket an Indy related product.

Companies like U. S. Wings and even Wested Leather had to prove provenance and creative/contractual connections to the franchise in order to continue doing what THEY do, even though they had to make several changes in the way they advertised.

Regards! Michaelson

Thanks for all the input.
I'm still looking for the picture of the Archive Jacket that Kepler created.
I've found the Soldier of Fortune ad in one of the Tony Nowak threads.
Perhaps this will all appear in the Indygear Last Crusade Jacket writeup.

LatteJed wrote:Thanks for all the input.
I'm still looking for the picture of the Archive Jacket that Kepler created.
I've found the Soldier of Fortune ad in one of the Tony Nowak threads.
Perhaps this will all appear in the Indygear Last Crusade Jacket writeup.

There used to be pictures of Lee's old personal one on the main site. Perhaps they will show up again in one of the new jacket write ups.