Bahabp100
Practically Family
- Messages
- 855
Did you get a 5* CAL LAPD?@unhatted Great jacket and fit. I had the same one with a different label in green.
But I do want to point out about the sizing and shape of the pattern. It's not true that the Chinese brands are made for Chinese bodies and Western brands are made for Western bodies. That's just great marketing move by the Taobao brands. No different than Tobacco companies using doctors as advertisement in the past.
All my Chinese brand jackets that came with P2P in the 23" has 19" shoulder, and 22" P2P has 18" ish shoulder width. Same porportions as all my Western brands. They are just tagged differently and that is the tricky part. Only one jacket below is China brand, rest three are western brands. All have zero drop from chest to bottom hem. Some has a little curve in the middle, some just straight down. All has the same shoulder to P2P ratio.
Can anyone guess which is which?
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This brings me to write my findings and conclusion and opinion about my Chinese branded jackets. It's basically what my early 5Star experience was. I remember reading a comment here that the Chinese jacket makers are still in the infant stage. That would be the exact description. I pissed away two Aero jackets money on Taobao/Aliexpress/Rebel to only confirm this. But I also did the same with my early 5Stars. There is nothing wrong with patterns. There's nothing wrong with the stitching. But jacket making is far more than just that. It's years and years and years of experience, and failures, and learning from failures. There is no txt book teaching this crap.
I think 5Star has shown the path quite clearly. Instead of copying a copy of a copy. Copy the original (real vintage). Otherwise it will just be me pissing away money again and again. The Chinese jackets are built to last but they will always get purged out of the closet, because there is nothing original or special for me to keep. I went through the same with my early 5stars, and I just went through this again with the Taobao brands.
Copy the vintage. Copy the vintage. Copy the vintage. And become the original.
But I get it. Everyone is just trying to put roof over our heads and dinner on the table. We do what we need to to get by. But the Chinese jacket makers can do so much more, just shift the development process a bit.
I will give Taobao sellers the marketing skills credit though. It's the easiest shopping experience. Just click and done. The problem is their jackets do NOT survive my closet purges. And the main reason has nothing to do with pattern or quality, but with originality.
Copy the original, and some will have tapers, aka low armhole. And in time, by copying the real original, one becomes original.
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