Lord Flashheart
Well-Known Member
That's a very nice Star Brems, very nice indeed. Enjoy 
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Bill Kelso. Whats happening?
- Thread starter HeliPilot23
- Start date
MediumMech
Active Member
Lovely jacket! Great fit! I agree that those knits do have quite a nice contrast in the natural light.
ikarashi shin-ichi
Well-Known Member
6カ月待ってやっと届いた“Aeronaut A-1 - Cowhide Badalassi Russet”は届いて3日後にボタンが外れそうになったのでお店でつけなおしてもらった。それはさておき、やっぱり Badalassiはかっこいい！。 五十嵐新一 した After waiting for 6 months, I finally received the "Aeronaut A-1 --Cowhide Badalassi Russet", and 3 days after it arrived, the button was about to come off, so I had it reattached at the store. Aside from that, Badalassi is cool! .. Ikarashi Shin-ichi
B-Man2
Well-Known Member
It’s great to see you back on VLJ Ikarashi!
We are looking forward to seeing more of you again.
Best wishes for you !
MaydayWei
Well-Known Member
Mr. Mike
Well-Known Member
A new arrival!
Last Friday I could take receipt of my second try BK Star Sportswear #18245. You probably recall that I recently had to let go my first BK trial after a 9 Month long waiting period completely in the dark not knowing what happened to my upfront payment - only to find in the end that when it arrived the sleeves were much too short for me. But something still lingered on as the overall impression and craftsmanship was really excellent. Also I wanted to find out whether there is substance behind BK’s pithy marketing sayings of provisioning the closest match to wartime originals with their Liberty HH and its specific aging to catch up with them. So I decided to give it a second try and ordered another one exactly of the same maker/contract but asked Andy to add 0.75” to the sleeves and 0.5” to the body length.
Bespoke jacket arrived last Friday now, which is incredibly fast given the fact that I placed my order beginning of November only. First things first, I think that applied extensions work much better for me (hope you can second that view based on the fit pics below). But there are some other interesting observations I wanted to share with you here. Despite ordering exactly the same contract in the same size (apart from the mentioned adjustments of Sleeves and Body length) the shoulder width (17.5” instead of 18”) as well as the P2P span (22” instead of 22.5”) came shorter than in my first order (0.5” are considered to be within a normal tolerance deviation I learned in the meantime). More remarkable even was that the new batch of HH BK used for producing this second specimen was considerably heavier than in my first order. The new leather is more a dull seal while the one of my first try was slightly more shiny/glossy (like shown on their webstore made of Victory HH). Because of its increased heaviness the jacket as such feels a bit more solid/stiff compared to the first order which immediately felt comfortably light almost like wearing a sweater rather than a jacket. I had not imagined that ordering the exact same jacket at the same vendor would bring so much variance and I wanted to share this here with you as it is probably rather uncommon to order the same jacket twice ;o).
Either way the new example resulted being excellent and I do like the fit allowing still for some base layering (the fit pics below were taken with a C-2 sweater worn underneath). The leather and craftsmanship are outstanding and it will be interesting to see how the aging effect outlined by BK will look like in reality. I will update-post if yearly wear brings substantial effect. Appreciate your feedback (regarding your view on the fit and experiences with BK aging if you have gathered).
Have a great season break and continued happy holidays!
Cheers
M
Last Friday I could take receipt of my second try BK Star Sportswear #18245. You probably recall that I recently had to let go my first BK trial after a 9 Month long waiting period completely in the dark not knowing what happened to my upfront payment - only to find in the end that when it arrived the sleeves were much too short for me. But something still lingered on as the overall impression and craftsmanship was really excellent. Also I wanted to find out whether there is substance behind BK’s pithy marketing sayings of provisioning the closest match to wartime originals with their Liberty HH and its specific aging to catch up with them. So I decided to give it a second try and ordered another one exactly of the same maker/contract but asked Andy to add 0.75” to the sleeves and 0.5” to the body length.
Bespoke jacket arrived last Friday now, which is incredibly fast given the fact that I placed my order beginning of November only. First things first, I think that applied extensions work much better for me (hope you can second that view based on the fit pics below). But there are some other interesting observations I wanted to share with you here. Despite ordering exactly the same contract in the same size (apart from the mentioned adjustments of Sleeves and Body length) the shoulder width (17.5” instead of 18”) as well as the P2P span (22” instead of 22.5”) came shorter than in my first order (0.5” are considered to be within a normal tolerance deviation I learned in the meantime). More remarkable even was that the new batch of HH BK used for producing this second specimen was considerably heavier than in my first order. The new leather is more a dull seal while the one of my first try was slightly more shiny/glossy (like shown on their webstore made of Victory HH). Because of its increased heaviness the jacket as such feels a bit more solid/stiff compared to the first order which immediately felt comfortably light almost like wearing a sweater rather than a jacket. I had not imagined that ordering the exact same jacket at the same vendor would bring so much variance and I wanted to share this here with you as it is probably rather uncommon to order the same jacket twice ;o).
Either way the new example resulted being excellent and I do like the fit allowing still for some base layering (the fit pics below were taken with a C-2 sweater worn underneath). The leather and craftsmanship are outstanding and it will be interesting to see how the aging effect outlined by BK will look like in reality. I will update-post if yearly wear brings substantial effect. Appreciate your feedback (regarding your view on the fit and experiences with BK aging if you have gathered).
Have a great season break and continued happy holidays!
Cheers
M
Attachments
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saucerfiend
Well-Known Member
Looks very nice! And that Star collar looks to be shaped perfectly! Enjoy!
I was expecting a lack of communication when I placed an order back at the start of October. However, I wanted to change the lining choice to wool tartan (+£50), and emailed mid-October, mid-November and early December to ask for a separate payment request to update the order. I’ve not had a response to any of these messages, and I am concerned that I may just receive the jacket without the revised lining.
What would fellow VLJ members suggest? I can only think of escalating via PayPal to try and get a response, perhaps even cancelling and reordering.
What would fellow VLJ members suggest? I can only think of escalating via PayPal to try and get a response, perhaps even cancelling and reordering.
mulceber
Moderator
I realize that at this point you're really worried, but I wouldn't do what you're suggesting. BK is known for being a bit difficult to communicate with, and they’re not alone in this respect - getting in touch with all of these small businesses is difficult, because they're each a company of approximately 5 people or fewer. My advice, that I’ve both used and seen others use to great effect is to (politely) email them every two weeks until you get a response. They will get back to you. If you ordered in October, then BK is still about 3 months away from making your jacket. That's PLENTY of time to get this detail changed.
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P-47 thunderbolt
Well-Known Member
Looks fantastic, that collar is spot on! Far better than other repro Stars! I've been wearing my BK roughwear, you'll find that the folded seams wear quite quickly but otherwise it's pretty similar to ELC and others in regards to aging. Not as drastic as first feared. You can't get much better than this
Mr. Mike
Well-Known Member
Hey Greg,@Mr. Mike Terrific jacket! If you ever want to sell it, please let me be the first person you contact
thanks a lot. Of course I will keep you in mind then. For your files I right away include the measures before I forget them again ;o).
Original Star #18245 size 42R measures:
--------------------
pit to pit 22.5
shoulders 18
back 24.75
sleeve 24.75
My example described in this thread with amendments to sleeves and body length (and standard deviation as claimed by BK):
pit to pit 22
shoulders 17.5
back 25.25
sleeve 25.5
One thing that holds probably already true today of the marketing sayings of BK is that one could well imagine a jacket would have exactly looked like this when handed over as governmental issue by the quartermaster back then. Simply impressive ;o).
Cheers
M
Mr. Mike
Well-Known Member
+ @timmbo
I would second that and stay on the polite side. Andy is very supportive and helpful despite being difficult to reach. I think they just have to fight down message load by taking notice rather than immediate responding to get back to you once production of your jacket piles up next (there is just too much change in mind of customers until the real production gets going).
Besides - during my second order I happened to have an online mail exchange with Andy in which we detected that some of my mails sent (even during our online exchange) somehow did not reach him. Andy proposed to add another e-mail address on cc ([email protected]). It may be advisable to add this to your mail as well when reaching out to him next time. Another thing that might be helpful is to address him directly in the subject line already (in the sense of "Andy, can you please confirm you received my change request all right?"). This often may do the trick as he often cannot cope with reading each new mail entirely right away.
The result will resolve all your worries soon believe me. Their current leather batch is quite nice.
cheers
M
