For Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Peter Botwright—the jacket maker for Raiders—was chosen to return and recreate the now famous jacket.

Botwright would handle the jackets worn in the film, and retail jacket maker U.S. Wings would be given the license from Lucasfilm to make official jackets to be sold to fans in stores, similar to how Stetson had licensed the hat for Temple of Doom. In the summer of 1989, Stetson would continue to sell licensed Indiana Jones hats at retailers at various price points in conjunction with Last Crusade.

Two jacket offerings made their way to the market with the release of Last Crusade. Paramount offered a jacket at the time the movie was released, and the Star Wars Insider fan club magazine offered one beginning in May of 1988. The Star Wars Insider jacket was based on the Cooper design. The Paramount jacket was based upon a design that was obtained by Lucasfilm in 1987 from Adventure Outfitters.

In the mid-1980s, Lee Keppler had been working with Flight Suits in El Cajon California on developing a fan-based Indiana Jones jacket through his company “Adventure Outfitters.” In 1987, Keppler was offering these jackets for sale in ads placed in the magazine Soldier of Fortune. Development of the pattern was from the ground up, relying on repeated viewings of Raiders as well as a wide variety of still shots.

Having done an array of work with Lucasfilm over the years, Keppler was familiar with how things were done, and noticed when two jacket orders for the same individual went to a familiar address. The jackets ended up in the Lucasfilm archives and will be referenced numerous times through this section as well as for the Crystal Skull jacket. It was not long after these were purchased that Keppler was contacted by Lucasfilm on behalf of Anthony Powell. Keppler was asked if he could provide jackets for the production of the third Indiana Jones installment.

Incidentally, in 1988, the license for the jacket was picked-up by Disney, the now-owners of Indiana Jones franchise. This licensing deal ran parallel with Disney and Lucasfilm partnering on the Indiana Jones and Star Wars attractions at Disney’s theme parks.

Keppler’s most visible modification on his design with Flight Suits was the addition of snaps on the storm flap. This makes Keppler the originator of the press studs on the storm flap for Last Crusade and Crystal Skull—the studs were removed for Dial of Destiny. They were on his Flight Suit jackets in the Lucasfilm archives, copied to the final Crusade pattern, and that’s how they made it to the screen.

At this time, Keppler had reservations about making a commitment to supply the film due to some uncertainties with Flight Suits. Namely, there seemed a strong possibility that the company might be changing ownership and with that it was not a sure thing that new ownership would want to continue doing the smaller custom orders that Keppler had informally arranged with the company.

In fact, back in 1986, Keppler had been looking for other potential sources for jackets. It was during these searches that he came across Botwright and Leather Concessionaires. Learning that Botwright was the man that made “THE” original jackets used in Raiders was quite a find. Numerous correspondences passed between the two. Botwright sent Keppler a jacket, represented as being made from the original patterns. This example however had numerous “authenticity issues” (causing Keppler to nickname the sample “the Bellhop” jacket). In order to fix these inaccuracies, Keppler sent Botwright one of the Flight Suits manufactured Adventure Outfitters jackets to examine and Botwright made some jackets based on it for Keppler to consider for sale through his company. Since no working relationship could be finely tuned to meet the needs of both Keppler and Botwright, no further partnership ensued. After Last Crusade however, Keppler would became a ‘broker’ through his ads for fans wanting Indy jackets made by Botwright.

In light of Keppler’s reservations to commit to supplying jackets for Last Crusade, he referred them to Botwright. While Powell did not know him, Botwright and Noel Howard were personal friends. Powell contacted Howard, and Howard explained to Powell a potential problem.

As related by Howard, “Monty would have sacked me if he had known Leather Concessionaires had been working on Last Crusade.” In fact, Berman has said that he was unaware that Botwright worked on Last Crusade. It was around this time that Leather Concessionaires changed its name to Wested Leather.

Following Keppler’s reference, Howard assured Powell that he would secure Botwright to make the jackets based on the prototype and Powell’s specific design changes. Howard delivered the prototype jacket from Powell to Botwright, which should have looked very familiar to him, as it would have been identical to the Adventure Outfitters jacket Keppler had sent to him a year before. Howard acted as the interface between Powell’s modification requests—larger collar, etc.—and Botwright’s work.

In total, the following changes to the original Raiders jacket design are visible on the versions worn in Last Crusade:

• Wider storm flap
• Press studs on storm flap
• Larger collar
• Lighter “chocolate” color
• More substantial leather
• Comfort cut and lining
• Larger pockets
• Wider leather surround on the inside pocket
• More distressed look to the leather
  
  

Keppler’s Adventure Outfitters jacket had gone from a fan made jacket to the big screen, and in 2008, it would be once again be the basis for Indy’s jacket when Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull came to the big screen.