Return to the Proms

Today was a busy and exciting day. It was the latest Doctor Who Proms, plus I was unexpectedly working freelance, which meant everything was a bit more rushed than I’d like.

MY DAY
When I’m not tailoring, I do occasional days of freelance work doing partly what I did prior to being laid off work last year. For over 20 years I have worked in art studios of either design or advertising agencies, as well as pre-press houses, preparing artwork for print.

The past couple of days I have been at Saatchi & Saatchi, one of the most famous advertising agencies in London. In the 1970s and 1980s they did some iconic advertising work.

Two of their most famous was for the Conservative Party prior to them beating Labour in our 1979 election.

Their poster, “LABOUR ISN’T WORKING” (see above) has been aped many a time; and their poster for anti smoking poster for the Public Health Department, depicting a pregnant man (see right), has also gone down in advertising history - and it was a public information poster, not some high profile multiple-national company. In fact the in house bar/pub at Saatchi's is called The Pregnant Man.

Working at their office is quite inspirational. Across the threshold is carved the words NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE..... (see left)

Anyway, so after telling them I HAD to be out the door by 5pm, we headed down to Kensington and the Royal Albert Hall.

eBay madness

Buses can be annoying – you wait for ages, then three come along at once!

Well the same can be said for Paul Smith PS shirts on eBay recently.
In July last year, when news broke that Matt Smith was wearing a Paul Smith shirt, everyone was frantically looking to find where to get hold of one. Supplies quickly ran out, and the old reliable fall-back of eBay came into its own when the occasional shirt did appear ever few weeks. Some went for reasonable prices, others a bit higher if two bidders went head-to-head.

But recently there have been fewer and fewer on offer, until a couple of weeks back.

The recent spate of shirts have all been of the blue flavour, and each has been interesting different from each other.

STRIPED CUFFS - SCREEN ACCURATE?

First to be listed, on 1st July, was a very unusual PS shirt (see below).

It was notable for having striped cuffs, but with a top-stitching unlike any I have seen to date; it also had a unconcealed button-stand; and a slightly fitted back.
It is the first shirt I have seen with a red buttonhole on the placket, which is visible on-screen, especially in The Eleven Hour. To date, this is the closest I have seen to the screen-worn shirts.

It had an amazing starting price of just £1, but sold after 28 bids for £250.

SLIM-FIT, PLAIN CUFFS

Then on 10th July another shirt appeared on eBay (see below).
This was a standard shirt, the same as the ones available from johnanthony.com last year.
It had a concealed button stand; plain cuffs; and is likely to have had a heavily tailored back and a breast pocket as the John Anthony shirts did, but it was not possible to confirm this from the photos.

It had a starting price of £40, and sold after 15 bids for £105, which is in line with the price of some new Paul Smith shirts.

STRIPED CUFFS

Finally worth mentioning, is another shirt that was listed on 13th July (see below).

This appears to be identical to a shirt I bought from tobi.com.

It has striped cuffs; an exposed button-stand; and looks to be the more generous fit.

This opened with a £10 staring price, but quickly spiraled out of control, and by the time it closed 10 days later, it had reached a staggering £650!!!!!

FRENCH CUFFS

In September 2010 Ryan put his unusual burgundy PS shirt with French cuffs up for sale.

There were some nice detail pictures of the shirt, including those cuffs.
From a starting price of $99, the bidding soon was creeping up, and by the end of the auction it had reached $350 (£226 to keep it in context with the other shirts above).

A bit of a hint – I can’t wait to see those cuffs at first hand . . .

Finally, as a reminder, here is a list of the variations I have seen in the Paul Smith shirts using the distinctive squiggly design.
If you have another variation not listed here, do drop me a line.

1. John Anthony
These were available in both colours; no button-stand, concealed buttonholes; plain cuffs; sleeve straps; slim fit, heavily tailored back; breast pocket; embroidered PS on sleeve placket

2. Tobi.com
Only available in blue; visible buttons, but no button-stand; striped starched cuffs; standard fitting, no back tailoring; embroidered PS on sleeve placket

3. Found by Ryan
Blue shirt; French double-cuffs

4. eBay - sold for £250
Very similar to (2) but top-stitching on cuff set much further in from edge; red placket buttonhole

The Tour Of Doom

This is one of my delayed entires.

I should have posted this at least a week back, but due to my vertigo attack, I was unable to finish writing it. Here it is at last.

Here is the list of my week:

23rd June - BONHAMS AUCTION

24th June - CARDIFF TOUR

26th June - LONDON TOUR

27th June - SIX COAT (Cloth Ears)

So, it was the 24th of June, and day two of my week of who events. this time taking me on a guided tour of the Cardiff locations used in the new series.

Vertigo!

Blimey!

If you’ve noticed that the updates on my blogs have been a bit lacking the past couple of weeks – there is a reason.
I am just now getting back on my feet (literally) after having an acute attack of vertigo.

Now, this is not the cliched fear of high buildings a la James Stewart in Hitchcock’d classic 1958 film. What I had was an inner ear infection which brought on a strong giddiness one morning, and before long the room was spinning and I was throwing up.

I found I could not even keep my eyes open – so like Amy Pond in Flesh and Stone, I had to keep them tight shut for fear the sensation would return.

The best way I can describe the sensation, was to think back to when I was a kid at school and you do that mad spinning round on the spot until you can’t stand up. It was just like that – but without all the irritating need to do the spinning. Oh, and the effects were 24-7.

After the doctor was called out (not The Doctor, just A doctor) the following day, I was confined to bed for over a week, and was barely able to open my eyes the entire time.

Anyway, back on the mend now.
But if I am currently in the process of making you something, I’m afraid my schedule has been somewhat disrupted, and may remain so until I can get back on track. I also need to catch up on some exciting blog entires I had been writing before I was struck down, so look out for them soon.

Normal service will be resumed.

The Panbaftica Opens

Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!!!!
Sorry about that. I'm just too excited.

Tonight I was priveliged to attend the Bafta preview screening for the penultimate Matt Smith episode, The Pandorica Opens.

Public BAFTA Event -
The BAFTA site

The Doctor Who News Page:
The Pandorica Opens - Preview

I arrived at Bafta in good time, but had apparently missed the arrival of Matt and Karen.
The street outside was packed with fans, a few of whom had managed to grab a rare autograph from the stars.

Looking around a spotted a familar little face, a face familiar too to anyone who reads my blog: Jack, the youngest Eleventh Doctor cosplayer I know!

I went up to him and said 'You must be Jack!' he looked at me confused, but his started to smile as he noticed my shirt. 'Matt Smith wears a shirt like that!' he exclaimed.
I introduced myself to his father and Jack and I started exchanging compliments about our costumes, mine incomplete as it was too hot to wear my tweed. 'Where's your bow tie?' he challenged me. I pulled it out of the pocket of the tweed I was putting on.
'Bow ties are cool!' we agreed.

'But you haven't got braces like mine!' Jack exclaimed. The other pocket of my tweed soon put that right. Though I had foolishly left my sonic at home, so I was truely trumped on that one.

I had only been in full costume a few seconds before someone approached me and ask if I knew of the Eleventh Doctor costume blog, or the Tennant Coat one too. I was rumbled! We had a nice chat, interrupted by the arrival of Steven Moffat, who stopped to sign numerous autographs. Jack was taken to see him and as he passed he complimented him on his costume. Jack took it in his stride.

Less could be said of Arthur Darvill who swished past without signing or stopping for anyone. A round of boos and hisses convayed the crowds sentiments there.

Entry was by ticket only, and I managed to nab a couple through eBay - at hyperinflated prices, but ho hum.

Bafta were not issuing tickets before the event, instead working it as a names-on-list affair, so it wasn't until my seller could collect his own ticket before I could have mine.
The rickets themselves were a very dull and boring thing to hold, just being yellow pieces of paper with the Bafta logo on it. I was hoping for a nice momento of the evening, but I'll have to look elsewhere for that.

Going in we found some good seats, as it turned out immediately in front of Ian Levine and Warris Hussein, the director of the first ever Who story back in 1963.
Also entering we saw Susan Hampshire. Yes, I didn't work that one out either!

The audatorium was packed, and after squeezing in the final few, it was time to start the proceedings.

Junior Doctor

If you are familiar with my Tennant Suit Blog, you will know of an occasional thread I run there called Me And My Tennant Suit. I featured a number of suit owners, all proudly displaying their prized suits.

There have been a number of cosplayers who have assembled some awesome Eleven outfits to date, but I just HAD to share the one below as he is undoubtedly the most endearing and inspirational I have ever seen!

His name is Jack and he is six and a half.

His Dad helped him get this amazing pint-sized costume together.

The jeans and braces came from H&M, the shirt is from Adams and the rest was picked up on eBay.
His Dad said, “The tweed jacket was the hard find, not many kids tweeds come up, and when they do the chance of getting a good colour, two button is slim. So bit of luck with that!” And he only paid £20 for it too!

The shoes were bought for 99p and are actually in the style of Converse All Stars, but by a different maker. I tiny touch of Tennant there!
The bow tie was also a snip at 99p!

His dad says it’s great fun having him run about the house being The Doctor. “It takes me back to my childhood, wearing the long 4th Doctor scarf my gran knitted for me and a hat my grandad gave me!”

The Tweed jacket

I had held off posting anything about the jackets Matt Smith has been wearing, mainly because I wanted to find a definitive way of obtaining just the right type rather than give vague, unhelpful info.

So far Matt has been seen wearing three distinctly different jackets:

Season Five

Harris Tweed

The first jacket Matt was seen wearing (for location scenes shot in July 2009 for The Time Of Angels) was a fine-checked Harris tweed (see left).

This was widely publicised at the time and soon after, included in a double-page spread in the Radio Times (see below).

It has since been revealed the fabric is a Mackenzie two-by-two dogtooth (see some of the online articles in the links at the end of this entry).

Click here to download a high resolution copy of the article: Radio Times.

The jacket has a two button closure with holed buttons; two outside pockets and a single vent at the back; as well as dark elbow patches.

This jacket was worn in: Victory Of The Daleks, The Time Of Angels, Flesh And Stone
It was also worn for the 2010 BBC Prom Concert.

Series Five costume index

A while back over on my Third Doctor Blog I ran a series of features about Jon Pertwee’s costume changes during his run as The Doctor.
I wrote it because I was curious to work out the transition from his first year when he wore the same clothes all season, through to his last where he rarely wore the same thing twice!

Matt  Smith’s costume appeared at the outset to be a fairly fixed affair, but as the series has progressed a number of subtle variants have emerged. What follows is an attempt to document these in one place.

All of the images below have been grabbed from the HD transmissions. Click on them to view in full resolution.

The Eleventh Hour

Jacket Donegal Tweed

NB: There is a minor continuity error in the closing scene, where a close-up shows The Doctor wearing the Harris Tweed jacket (see right) which does not appear for two episodes.

Shirt Burgundy Paul Smith with matching burgundy bow tie

Trousers Dogtooth design skinny jeans from TopMan
NB. These jeans can be quickly identified by the visible metal waistband button at the top of the fly (see below).

Boots Replica All Saints Layer boots

Meanwhile In The TARDIS

Disc 1 of complete Series Five DVDs

This bridging scene, which links The Eleventh Hour directly to The Beast Below, maintains perfect continuity between the two episode.

Jacket Donagal Tweed

Shirt Burgundy Paul Smith with matching burgundy bow tie

Trousers Dogtooth design skinny jeans from TopMan

Boots Replica All Saints Layer boots

The Beast Below

Jacket Donegal Tweed

Shirt Burgundy Paul Smith with matching burgundy bow tie

Trousers Dogtooth design skinny jeans from TopMan

Boots Replica All Saints Layer boots 

Victory Of The Daleks

Jacket Harris Tweed in Mackenzie two-by-two dogtooth weave

Shirt Blue Paul Smith with matching navy bow tie

Trousers Plain charcoal skinny jeans
NB. These jeans can be distinguished from the dogtooth jeans by their clean closure at the waistband with no visible button (see right).

Boots Unidentified brown boots

11 shirt - pattern cutting

A couple of months back I started work on producing a replica Matt Smith shirt.
To make it work I need to pull two aspects of the shirt together before I can make my first one.

Firstly, I needed to match the squiggly pattern design, which I have now done (see left), as well as the stripes for the cuffs.
You can read about that under Pattern Repeat and Screen-accurate Cuffs.

The other thing I need to do is sort out the pattern for the shirt itself.

Although I have a couple of Paul Smith shirts, each to a differing fit, my plan is to make a shirt that is much more of a classic size, rather than the over-tailored tight fit of the Paul Smith originals.

But instead of pattern trace my shirts, I am going to use a commercial pattern by Burba (see right) as a starting point.

It is a fairly straight forward shirt pattern with a number of permutations of style, but I will be making my own adaptions based on what I have learnt on my recent college course, as well as how the real Paul Smith shirts are cut.

I also have a cunning plan to make the cutting of the shirts a lot easier in the long term. I was originally going to have the fabric printed, then cut it out to my adapted pattern.
However, I have realized I need to make quite a few changes, so my plan is to make all those changes in a digital format, then directly apply the pattern shapes to the printed fabric itself.

First thing I need to do is scan the entire Burba pattern, which I have to do in A4 bits and patch together (see left).
To aid matching up, I spray-mounted it onto dot and cross paper first, giving me alignment reference. This also made it more robust for scanning.

I will not be using all the pieces. For example the collar comes in three styles (see on the left edge of the image), but none of them are to the right shape. This I will crib directly from my Paul Smith shirts.

I then retouched to remove the background paper colour so it was easier to trace in Illustrator (see above).

The pattern contains a range of sizings, from S to XXL, all of which are superimposed on top of each other. You can see this in the sleeve shape.

To start with I will trace the L size and make sure the pattern works. Adapting it for the other sizes will then be a very simple job.

River Island Boots - buyers review

This week I helped a friend in the US get a pair of the River Island Double Eyelet Boots, since they do not ship outside the UK.

Here are his views and comments now he has received them.

Thanks to a particularly awesome UK based member here, my pair of River Island double eyelet boots arrived today. If anybody was on the fence about getting a pair of these, I’d say go for it.



The pictures warranted the ridiculously overpriced Tom Baker socks.

Once you get the strangely oversized tongue tucked in place, they’re incredibly comfortable. They’re made with a nicely broken in predistressed leather, so they’re soft from the minute you take them out of the box. I'm not particularly planning on doing an 11 costume, but the boots look so cool I had to get a pair. In my opinion these are way better looking than the All Saints boots, and the sole is rubber with some really nice grips, so no slipping.

I like just about everything about them, except they only look good with tight pants, which contradicts the recent switch I made to never wearing tight pants again, haha. I’ll just have to find a compromise.

The Third Way

After everyones excitement of find the Paul Smith PS shirts last year in burgundy and blue; then the discovery of another shirt in blue, but with more screen-accurate cuff; there now comes yet another variation!!

This time it has cuffs with stripes, but these cuffs are french-style cuffs, intended for use with cuff links, though there does appear to be a button to do them up with as well (see below, left).

Paul Smith shirts often like to have little hidden details that only the wearer knows about and can see. The striped fabric is on the inside of the french-cuffs, and when worn conventionally cannot be seen (see above, left).

They could be folded inside out to display the stripes, though it would make them a bit bulky.

Thanks go to Ryan for sending me the pictures and sharing with us his amazing find.
Well done Ryan!!!
(And well done for wearing your watch face down.)

RiverIsland.com - Celeb Style

River Island seem to be featuring a lot in my blog this week.

After buying a pair of their Double-Eyelet Boots as a stand-by for my All Saints ones, they are currently running a Matt Smith related feature on their Website, thanks to a good spot by Gallifrey Base member CultOfSkaro.


Their site is totally flash-based, so I can’t give you a direct link, but if you go to the MEN heading in the menu bar, and choose GET THE LATEST LOOK, you should be able to find it (see above).

In case they take it down off their site in the future, here is a grab of it so you can see it.

River Island Double Eyelet Boots

Although I have a pair of actual All Saints Layer Boot (see right), I am now terrified of wearing them!

Firstly due to their scarcity; and secondly because they have real smooth leather soles, so the potential of falling arse over tit is quite high!

Let it not be said I don’t stand by what I publish – so I thought I might go and seek out a pair of the River Island next-best option that I recommended as an Alternative.

It was one of my clients, Peter Lack, who first drew them to everyone’s attention, so a big thanks to him for sharing his find with us all.

I was going up to central London today anyways, so I took a little trip down Oxford Street to see what I could find. This is the most perfect place to buy shoes, as this is the street cited in The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy in the short film about the Shoe Event Horizon . . . .

I found the flagship River Island store (see above) and went to the footwear department. I was surprised to see that there are a number of similar boots on offer.

I have listed their individual product codes here, as their website is flash-based so I am unable to provide direct links to the shoes concerned.

Its worth looking at the Military Lace Up Boot (code 245950); the Leather Military Boot (code 242717); the Military Zip Boot (code 246409).

But two caught my eye: the Distressed Military Boot (code 242172) (see below, right) and the Double Eyelet Boot (code 243710) (see below, left), which I recommended previously.

I ask for them in a size 10 and after a bit of scrabbling around (one of them was part of the display) they found a matching pair!

I tried them on (see above – out with Ten, in with Eleven!) and they were a good, comfortable fit. They also have a rubber sole, so less likely to be slippery on wet or shiny surfaces.

11 shirt - Screen accurate cuff modifications

As the broadcast of the first Matt Smith episode drew nearer, we started to get more publicity images of Matt in costume.

The only image til now that showed the cuffs on the burgundy shirt had the jacket over the top, so it was only possible to see the edge of the cuff and two stripes burgundy around it (see right). At this point it was thought that the sleeve straps had been butchered and adapted to modify the cuffs, which at the time made sense.

Later, through a reader of my blog, I found another variant of the shirt in the blue, which appeared to have a lot of the modifications needed already done – and the cuffs were pre-striped into the bargain.

The stripes, however, covered all of the cuff, not just a couple around the edge (see left).

This had caused a flurry in the forums, as it started to look like I had acquired a more likely Paul Smith shirt compared to what had been found to date.

A clue to confirm this then appeared a few weeks later in the 3-D trailer, where it was very briefly possible to see that the blue shirt had more than just a couple of stripes on it (see below).

My new shirt was looking more and more like the real thing. But we still had not seen all of the cuffs on the burgundy shirt. Could this be fully striped too, like my blue shirt?

Then finally, as the broadcast of the series drew even closer still, one particular image published in The Sunday Telegraph Magazine caught my attention (see left). It shows Matt wearing the shirt, but without the tweed jacket, so for the first time we got to clearly see the cuffs, and yes, they were just like the blue shirt I had!

There was then some criticism of those who had done the sleeve strap modification, saying it was all wrong – which in truth it was. However, the straps are not that long, and even when pressed out fully, they only gave enough fabric to add two stripes around the cuffs. It would never have been possible to add stripes to the entire cuff using this method.

This calls for a plan B.

Trousers - TopMan

Now the trousers, at the time of their discovery back in late July 2009, were the easiest garment to find and obtain – and cheap into the bargain.

Someone spotted that they were a simple Houndstooth Skinny Jean from TopMan, and they were widely available for £35 at most branches across the UK. The only minor problem was finding a pair to fit.

Most branches stocked the slimmer waist sizes, to target the younger, waif-like shoppers. After trying a couple of stores – and feeling suitably old and out of touch – I retreated back to the safety of a cup of tea and internet shopping to find the trousers fully in stock on the TopMan website, right up to waist 36.
The purchase was painless and within a week I had my pair of trousers – and they fitted!

Result.

Since then, the style has been discontinued (as is becoming the routine with all the elements of Matt Smith’s costume it seems) and stocks rapidly ran out. I did just manage to grab a second pair online before supplies were totally depleted, and at half-price in their autumn sale, so a double result!
Since then they have been totally sold out and are unobtainable.

So my trousers are sorted.
That was easy.