I’ve been lurking on this forum for the better part of a year, and while this sort of review won’t be as good as say, Ties, I did want to offer up my experience with Fivestar and with A-2’s in general. That said I want to thank everyone for the information, insights, and passion on this forum. It has been a great help for my own entry into this world. Buckle in, this may get long.
Inspiration: I grew up about 10 minutes from the Mighty Eighth Museum in Savannah, GA. Seeing all the A-2’s in there growing up really was always one of the highlights of my many, many visits. That said, given how warm it is in South Georgia, leather jackets haven’t been much of an investment idea for me. That was until Masters of the Air came out, and say what you will about historical accuracies, the jackets in action just look damn good. While I know Eastman provided a majority of the jackets for the show, I couldn’t justify the price 1) for my first A-2 2) I just wouldn’t wear it enough where I live and 3) being 6’6 and built like a basketball player makes sizing difficult. With that in mind, I came to Fivestar. This worked out because I had a particular idea for what I wanted. Buck Cleven’s brotherly dynamic with Egan very much reminded me of myself and my own brother who while we of course don’t fly in combat, have had some scrapes with mortality. Now I know the A-2 Buck had in real life was ID’d in a thread on here as a Bronco, but in order to tie it back to MotA, I went Monarch as that is the style the costume designer on the show preferred, despite many patterns being used. So to tie back to the real Buck, I used AI to color a photo his A-2 and get an approximation of how his looked.
With this I decided on a Monarch with Mid-Brown HH (thanks to Shawn’s suggestion, he was a great help as well) and seal brown knits, with Olive stitching. Also, while not important necessarily to the outward design I added did the cognac brown (really dull orange) lining in cotton. For sizing I added about 2 inches to the back to bring it to 26.5” and about an inch and half to the sleeve to bring it also to 26.5”. My last adjustment was bringing the shoulders down from 20.2 to 19.5” just to help the square shoulders of the Monarch to not stick out, and sit the seam right on my shoulder. Forgive the angle of the photos, as stated before I am tall and it is hard to get the right angle most of the time. Also it is a bad phone camera so, ya know.
While some details are still a tad off, like the stitching under the epaulette’s not quite being accurate, I think Shawn and Fivestar nailed it. I love the overall fit, I maybe could’ve done another half inch in length but the sleeves and shoulders are perfect for me.
Lastly I want to discuss color. One of my favorite parts about this midbrown is that it can have quite a color change in different lighting, even on separate sides of the same room as shown below:
Color wise, including knits and leather this is probably the most accurate look (also featuring so great grain imo):
I just again want to thank the forum members for their insight on here, it helped me a lot as well as the always helpful Shawn and Fargham at Fivestar.
Inspiration: I grew up about 10 minutes from the Mighty Eighth Museum in Savannah, GA. Seeing all the A-2’s in there growing up really was always one of the highlights of my many, many visits. That said, given how warm it is in South Georgia, leather jackets haven’t been much of an investment idea for me. That was until Masters of the Air came out, and say what you will about historical accuracies, the jackets in action just look damn good. While I know Eastman provided a majority of the jackets for the show, I couldn’t justify the price 1) for my first A-2 2) I just wouldn’t wear it enough where I live and 3) being 6’6 and built like a basketball player makes sizing difficult. With that in mind, I came to Fivestar. This worked out because I had a particular idea for what I wanted. Buck Cleven’s brotherly dynamic with Egan very much reminded me of myself and my own brother who while we of course don’t fly in combat, have had some scrapes with mortality. Now I know the A-2 Buck had in real life was ID’d in a thread on here as a Bronco, but in order to tie it back to MotA, I went Monarch as that is the style the costume designer on the show preferred, despite many patterns being used. So to tie back to the real Buck, I used AI to color a photo his A-2 and get an approximation of how his looked.
With this I decided on a Monarch with Mid-Brown HH (thanks to Shawn’s suggestion, he was a great help as well) and seal brown knits, with Olive stitching. Also, while not important necessarily to the outward design I added did the cognac brown (really dull orange) lining in cotton. For sizing I added about 2 inches to the back to bring it to 26.5” and about an inch and half to the sleeve to bring it also to 26.5”. My last adjustment was bringing the shoulders down from 20.2 to 19.5” just to help the square shoulders of the Monarch to not stick out, and sit the seam right on my shoulder. Forgive the angle of the photos, as stated before I am tall and it is hard to get the right angle most of the time. Also it is a bad phone camera so, ya know.
While some details are still a tad off, like the stitching under the epaulette’s not quite being accurate, I think Shawn and Fivestar nailed it. I love the overall fit, I maybe could’ve done another half inch in length but the sleeves and shoulders are perfect for me.
Lastly I want to discuss color. One of my favorite parts about this midbrown is that it can have quite a color change in different lighting, even on separate sides of the same room as shown below:
Color wise, including knits and leather this is probably the most accurate look (also featuring so great grain imo):
I just again want to thank the forum members for their insight on here, it helped me a lot as well as the always helpful Shawn and Fargham at Fivestar.
