The Muddied History of the Indy Jacket?

[Ragingblues]

I guess we need access to the"Keymaker".

Woops... wrong trilogy!

Cool twist on the story, which sounds very close to what Patterson was saying actually. Like you said, it doesn't really matter anyway.... but it would help fan the flames of those jacket wars whenever they get started.

Although.... Todd's new Indy jacket brings in a whole new chapter to the story. It doesn't involve any of the traditional characters, isn't shrouded in mystery, and appears to have a very happy ending; An affordable Indy jacket of great accuracy with the perfect leather.

Thanks for sharing again GCR,

Ken

[PeterB]

I only joined today mainly as I was promted to look at Todds creation and saw this thread
I find it quite amazing how these stories get twisted.
If anyone asked Lee Keppler where got his original jackets from he would have to say Peter at Leather Concessionaires (now Wested Leather). This was before internet when Lee was basically our only USA customer. He would order several jackets at a time to his specification and I would send them to him.
It was only when we started selling the jackets online that our relationship declined mainly due to the fact that the price was to low for him to make a decent profit.
That is when he and several others took one of my jackets to Flightsuits with a view to making a better one with a better profit margin and maybe in some eyes it was better even though it was counterfeit. In fact Flightsuits early publicity states it copied my inferior original.
Now ask youself a question having done all this would you then sent the FS jacket to me in England to copy. I dont think so. I have not had any dealings with Lee since he took my jacket to FS. to copy and why would he want to buy any more from me in the UK when he hade his own manufacturer FS in the same town in USA.
I never saw a Flightsuits jacket in the flesh until several years ago. That is not to say I did not take on board comments from the fans to make general improvements over the years.
I am sorry that their is no big mystery, but that is it.
A few silly accusation from Patterson that did not hold water stirred things up but thinking back it may well have been a promotional thing to discredit me in favour of FS his pet project. But that is history and long forgotten.
Oh' by the way the original ROLA jacket and Temple jacket had piped inside pocket it was was only when making the Crusade jacket we were asked to strengthen and deepen the inside pocket to take the grail diary. We put that pocket on all jackets for the same reason.
Oh' I also have original Lee Keppler paperwork with order specifications which I could publish if required.
Need to know more jusk ask or email me.
Cheers
PeterB

[Ragingblues]

Peter,

Welcome to the Lounge, first off!

Thanks very much for the scoop on how everything happened. As you know, there can be alot of misinformation scattered around the web, so it's nice to hear something that isn't second hand.

Ken

[Kt. Templar]

Hi Peter,

Welcome! Nice to hear your side first hand too. I hope your ears weren't burning too much!

Take care in all that fog!

Regards,

Kt.

[fedoraman]

Beats me how you keep your cool with all this non-sense Peter! Thanks for clearing this up, AGAIN

[Marc]

Good to see you around at the lounge Peter

I met Peter and his lovely wife Pam in person this October at the European summit in Hamburg and they're about the nicest people around. Can't wait to meet them again next year!!!

Please forward kind regards to Pam, Peter! And thanks for being patient with me and my "book" of specs. on my last order

Regards,

Marc (aka Mr. Roohide ;D)

[GCR]

Yes, welcome Mr. Botwright!

It's good to finally have the input of someone who was actually involved in this whole situation firsthand. Now we can really see the whole picture starting to take shape.

peterb said:

I never saw a Flightsuits jacket in the flesh until several years ago. That is not to say I did not take on board comments from the fans to make general improvements over the years.
I am sorry that their is no big mystery, but that is it.
A few silly accusation from Patterson that did not hold water stirred things up but thinking back it may well have been a promotional thing to discredit me in favour of FS his pet project.

That's an aspect I hadn't really considered before. But I believe it definitely warrants consideration if you intend to approach the whole story of the jacket objectively, which is what I try to do with the whole deal, stay objective.

I don't own an FS (or G&B or whatever). Never have. I will admit, a lot of the hoopla over at the Indyfan Forum that developed back when the FS project began, turned me off to the whole idea of buying an FS. I've got nothing against the company that makes the jacket, or how it's made, or how it looks, or even the price (well, maybe I wouldn't mind so much if it was a tad cheaper... ). I've got nothing against people who own and love their Expeditions. But all of the turmoil and (for lack of better phrase) "bad blood" that came about with the creation of the FS jacket just made me opposed to the idea of ever owning one. Despite these feelings, I still try to approach the whole jacket issue very objectively. I try not to let my love for my Wested jacket interfere with my interest in the history of the jacket and it's creation and subsequent changes and imporvements over the years.

Anyways, at least now I can stop dredging my memory for bits and pieces of info on the whole jacket story that were probably remembered wrong on my part, anyway!

Welcome again, Peter!

-GCR

[rick5150]

I can remember Peter saying that he found some of the original leather from the jacket as well and as a result was able to source a very similar leather - what we now know as the Authentic Italian Lambskin...

[West]

God... I never thought I'd EVER reply to one of these threads ever again.

So I started posting on Indyfan back in 1998/99, and GCR has got the story pretty close on the money.

So the story goes...

Peter made the jackets for Raiders. From what Peter has told me several times (because I generally enjoy hearing him tell me his accounts) he was asked to go fit Ford for a leather coat. The costume designer told Peter to basically create a coat based upon his A2 and James Dean coats.

For TOD, Wested (aka Leather Concessionaires at that time) had a bit of what several "gear historians" (like Keppler and Patterson) have called "a falling" out with Bermans and Nathan Costumiers or some costuming connection due to doing another movie without consulting them first. So the jackets used in TOD were either left overs from ROTLA or from an unnamed "French company."

Sometime after TOD (somewhere around 86-88) Lee Keppler tried to get his hands on an Indy coat and somehow found Leather Concessionaires. Keppler then ordered a Raiders coat from them and the coat he got from them was, in Keppler's own words, something that looked like a bellhop's coat. Keppler told me once on the phone that it looked nothing like what he had seen on screen. Keppler then, after talking to Peter about the coat and getting no where, went to Flightsuits (as he had past experience working with this company) and together they watched ROTLA and took measurements from what they saw and created a coat that to their eye looked like what they saw on screen (this coat is NOT what we currently consider the Flightsuits/G&B Expedition).

According to Lee, he sent this coat to Peter and this coat is what Peter copied and used as a basis for the coat used in LC. (The info in the past two paragraphs are accounts I was told by Lee, to the best of my memory).

SO then in '99 Patterson was able to ahold of a screen used Raiders coat thanks to him being an accountant and some wealthy client having a screen used coat in his private collection. Due to the client's refusal of him taking pictures, Patterson was only able to take measurements and notes. Patterson told me he tried to take the info he found to Peter to apply to all of the Indy coats, but (again according to Patterson) Peter refused and stated Patterson may add those changes as "custom features" to his own coats. THEN Patterson, MK, Lee went to FS and using their opinions and the notes Patterson had of the coat he saw, they created the first versions of the Expedition which wasn't released until early 2000/2001.

(It is worthy to note that the early versions of the Expedition did have some inaccuracies in them, for example the pockets were not screen accurate. I owned two of the early Expeditions and the pockets weren't scalloped right and placed too far back.)

It is one of these early Expeditions that was sent to Peter to check out, and Peter didn't seem very impressed by it (from what he said). In a way, I agree with him... The pleating of the lining only caused it to "bag" or "droop out" in my opinion more than it helped improve the functionality of the pleats.

After the years passed, both Wested and G&B slowly improved their jackets at the same time, improving the pocket placement and such to what we currently have. It wasn't until years after the Expedition showed up that Peter found the "incomplete" coat and changed it all and was able to create the "authentic" leather colors.

Of course, this is all based on what folks told me and what I can recall, and truthfully I really wish I could have seen more proof to all the things I've been told, as some of the stories (a few I've omitted) really do conflict with each other quite a bit.

God... Have I really been stuck in this hobby for 8-9 years? Man... I feel old...

Either way. I've owned several Westeds and I've seen and for a short time owned an Expedition. I currently only have a Wested Raider goat and love it. It took years to finally get the coat for me, but hey... I was worth it!

[pitfallharry]

These stories have gotten passed back and forth so much I gave up trying to figure out who did what and how they got this from that. I guess the only thing that matters is that things worked out and we've got quite a good selection of Indy jackets to choose from. That's the way I look at it.


Yes, the goatskin is very nice isn't it? I love mine as well. To bad Wested isn't offering it anymore.

By the way West .......Welcome to the Lounge!

[West]

Thanks! My old pal IndyBlues and I were talking the other day and he told me that this is the place to be for gear talk these days as I've been out of the gear loop due to a self imposed exile. Good to be part of another great community!

[GCR]

west said:

I've been out of the gear loop due to a self imposed exile.

Ah, the old self imposed exile trick, eh? Been there...

Thanks for further clarifying some of the old jacket myths, I knew I wasn't cracking up when I remembered all those tales from the Indyfan days. ;D

Anyways, welcome to the Lounge and welcome back to the hobby!

-GCR

[Kt. Templar]

Hi West,

Thanks for coming along and telling us your take on the story. It's good to hear the views of people who followed what happened "in real time". Anything we may have gleaned from other sites tend to get edited about as time gets on.

What happend that caused Lucasfilm or Bermans to get Peter back in for Last Crusade? Did they mend their differences, was it to do with Bond? As it is well known that Peter continued to do work for EON well after LC.

It's also nice that you can post here with out certain "long timers" jumping down your throat.

I've been shown a folder by Peter that I believe is from MK with lot's of pictures, notes and even a tracing of a pocket. From the looks of the pictures it seems to be a LC jacket. I really don't know where that fits into the puzzle. Does anyone know when MK might have had access to a screen used jacket?

[agent5]

Going back and reading alot of this was refreshing. I came into the gear hobby as the jacket wars were dying down over at Indyfan, right at the beginning of COW.

West's account of the G&B having inaccuracies made me think that if the jacket Patterson looked at was Terry Leonards then it had to have the smaller pockets moved farther from the jackets edge and the sewn up side straps, just as we see him wearing in the making of Raiders. I even posted a pic of Leonard wearing the jacket and Patterson confirmed that was the one. If so, there were some liberties taken by those who put the G&B jacket together and it is not all taken from the screen used jacket.
I mean, for the most part, certain measurements such as the length and collar size, etc. can be determined but some of the stuff on that stunt jacket was so different that the jacket FS turned out they had to make a few changes, so it wouldn't have been as exact as we were all led to believe. This was one of the reasons the jacket wars started to begin with, if I'm not mistaken.

[Deleted]

Hey West,

Welcome to the Lounge, any pal of Mike's is more than welcome here.

Cheers,
G-MANN

[Ragingblues]

Hey West,

Thanks for the information on the jacket situation. Who in the rest of the world ever though there was so much controvery surrounding the jacket a movie character wore? An who would think for a second that so many people would care about it? ;D

Thanks for sharing,

Ken

[jweaver]

Does anyone know where the "ToD jacket was 1" longer than the Raiders Jacket" thing got started?

West, thanks for posting, that was an interesting read.