‘Ultimate’ Frock Coat - customer review

Okay, so, how’s it goin’, it’s me again. I suppose this would be part four in my series of customer reviews for that crafty limey Steve Ricks, so, that being the case, I guess it would be best to imagine one of those jump-cut pre-credit recap sequences which encapsulates everything that has gone before, but in this case, more specifically, my frock coat oddessy. Or, you could just click on my last review if you can be bothered, but it’s a long story and I recommend that you don’t. And, in any case, that long story is over now.

If you are familiar with my epic quest for the perfect frock coat, you will know that when last we met, I had apparantly achieved the holy grail, when that clever bugger Steve Ricks had made me my last one. You remember that one, it was brown on the outside, and had the most astonishing array of golds, silvers, paisleys and greens on the inside. It was like the TARDIS of frock coats. And, it seemed that I had finally come to the end of the Star Wars Septology-esque saga. But not quite.

I still had in mind one more coat, just one more, my final ever stab at the one frock coat I would own and wear for the rest of me natural puff. The brown version had been exquisite, without question. But the rich brown shell was a heavy tweed-like fabric (limiting it’s potential usage out here in the colonies), and the ball-seizing lining was so elaborate, that I felt I needed one that could possibly be slightly more conducive to day to day wear, especially here on Tattooine.

And lo, one day on Starship UK, that ingenious threadman Steve Ricks was sitting on his couch, probably saying, “Thank Christ I’m done with that Ian Cummins tool. Do you know, if I never hear from him again, it’ll be too ... (iPhone beeps) Oh, cock.”

Five trousers - le review

I recently made a pair of Five Trousers for Jonathan, who organised the City Of Death tour of Paris I went on last year.

He received the trousers this week, and promptly sent me the following review to share with you.

It’s not the first time I buy something from Steven, but it’s the first time I buy anything so big. Last thing I’ve bought was a Mcoy Hat Bandana replica, which was perfect. To be true, I was a little bit anxious, it’s a custom fit trouser and I wasn’t sure if the measurement I took were right. But once it arrived, I wasn’t anxious anymore.

The Trousers arrived in the morning, I wasn’t totally awake, but once I’ve seen FedEx, I knew it was the trousers. I couldn’t wait, I’ve put my signature on the little machine, and take the package. Open it rapidly, and take out the trousers.

I put them on right away, and also a white shirt to see the result. Well they fit perfectly and it’s really comfortable – I’ve rarelly feel that good in a trouser.

Five Coat - review

This is a long overdue review but here goes.

One of the items that had been eluding me on a quest to put together costumes for all 11 Doctors was a proper looking 5th Doctor frock coat. When I first embarked on this journey in early 2007, budget constraints meant we were forced to go with a rather cheap solution I'd found online from a previous cosplayer. That plan was to take a lab coat, modify it, dye it beige and add red piping/bias tape. The result did the job and can't be beat cost-wise for a $50.00 investment. Although I was never really happy with it. I wanted to upgrade.

In June of 2009, my plans to commission a nice high end 6th Doctor frock coat crashed to a halt thanks to the untimely withdrawal of one of the better custom tailors to work on Dr. Who costumes (and really the only game in town if you wanted a quality Colin Baker coat). As a consequence, my attentions then turned back to the Davison coat. My plan was to have it ready for the '09 Comic Con so I duly ordered one with a 3 week rush turnaround from a well known online provider of custom clothing.

What I got back was severely disappointing. The fit was wrong. It had no flare in the skirt and draped rather like a shapeless box. This might work for an overcoat maybe, a frock coat - no. The lapels were too narrow and rounded, the front buttons too high set, strange vertical seams were present below the waistline that simply shouldn't have been there and finally, the fabric was too dark of a beige. Now I'll take the blame for the last part as I chose the fabric locally and it looked great in the store. As Steve has previously posted about, color is quite tricky especially when it comes to the all important lighting conditions. It was an expensive lesson learned. I was told by the online tailor in question it could be fixed for a nominal fee. I sensed if it was this far off the mark to being with, then they would never get it right so I passed. Soon after, I re-sold this coat and recouped what little I could from this misstep. I never even took it with me to Comic Con. The deadline was no longer an issue, but no decent coat to show for it. Now what?

Finally I did what I should have done from day one- which was turn to Steve Ricks, king of the impossible. I'd long admired Steve's work on his 10th Doctor coats and thought he would be a natural choice to re-commission a new 5th Doctor frock. Not only does he have the skills but he is, most importantly, a fellow Who fan who cares about the details just as much as you do. It turned out by happy coincidence that he was a fan of the 5th Doctor and had wanted to have a go at making the coat anyway. So we determined a payment schedule, I made my deposit in August of 2009 and we were off the races.

Little did I realize the race would take over 5 months to complete. There were a few factors holding us up. All of this is well documented already on this blog already but the short of it was - Steve was having to draw up the pattern almost from scratch, brushing up on his skills and finding similar garments to dissect and study. All of this paid off handsomely when in October, he delivered the test coat he'd made from white calico fabric. I was shocked at how good it already looked and how much *better* it was then my previous coat I'd picked up in July. The skirt flared, the fit was solid in all the right places, the button spacing looked right, the lapels looked great. I breathed a sigh of relief! After doing come comparisons to Season 19 production stills (and taking into account my own measurements) we both agreed on a few minor tweaks to the placement and width of the side pockets and adding a touch more length to the skirt.

In the meantime, we went through the process of picking materials. Steve is very well organized and had sent me 2 or 3 well laid out selections of swatches for wools and acetate/satin linings, buttons and trims. We quickly decided on the buttons and the red-orange trim. I had narrowed down my choice of lining to two options depending on the wool.

The only major hitch now was finding the right beige wool. I mean how hard can it be to find a 5th Doctor beige wool? Having been burned the 1st time I was extra careful choosing a replacement. Steve outlines this well in his blog, but this proved *really* tricky! We both searched high and low for about 3 months. Most of what we turned up was usually too brown, too grey, too green or too light/dark. Aiming for the Season 19 frock, I really wanted it to have that warm undertone of red or yellow in it. The few times I found a color I liked it was often not suitable fabric (50% wool/Lycra mix, cashmere etc). It was looking rather impossible. Finally after some help from a friend of mine who has a better eye for color than I do, (and a plethora of photoshop tests) I settled on one of the early swatches I found at B Black and Sons here in Los Angeles. It was a great color, BUT it was pretty pricey. almost 5 times what was budgeted. Once I made the decision I had to save up extra for it. When I went to buy it in December, I discovered to my disappointment that they were sold out and could not order more in. (They had sold out back in October no less!). By sheer luck, they had just gotten in another beige wool which was nearly as good and much more affordable. Steve had reservations due to how red it looked in certain light. Not taking any chances, I did another round of photo tests. It was quickly clear to me this new gaberdine was indeed a suitable replacement and bought my yardage. Based on this, I leaned to a more silver/taupe of the lining choices. The materials were finally all selected. The making of the frock coat could finally commence!

My only 'deadline' was to have it ready in time for Gallifrey 2010 and here Steve came through, the coat was indeed ready by the convention date. To further bring my costume up to snuff, I added an order of Season 19 Five trousers to the order as well which Steve happily obliged. I followed his blog while he was in the process of making the coat and he kept me up to date frequently on the progress. I was smiling wider and wider the more I saw this coat come together. Both of us were impressed how well the beige wool was photographing, pleased that the long fabric hunt had not gone in vain! Steve was always openly communicating along the way- even accomodating a last minute lapel tweak request from my end and altering it accordingly. I'm sure it was an added headache but he came though like always.

Finally in February of 2010 - I saw the finished coat and I was beyond pleased. I was going to own a top quality replica of the 5th Doctor's coat at last! The last hitch: due to logictics of travelling to the UK the following month and my desire to have 5 Doctor costumes for the Time Quest event, I had to ask Steve to hang on to the frock coat and trousers so I could collect them in person. It was a hard choice, but necessary. On the plus side, when I did arrive in England and Steve presented me with my coat on the first Day of Time Quest (for my photo with Peter Davison!) I was really blown away by the finished piece. I couldn't help but thank Steve profusely as he'd brought into existance one of my top costuming dreams. Once the entire costume was all together I felt like I was wearing Peter Davison's real costume for a moment. It doens't get much better than that.

What else can be said about Steve's work on this Peter Davison coat? It's absolutely smashing. It's a stop and look twice kind of coat. The quality of the tailoring is really top notch. When wearing this, it *feels* like a nice coat you'd see at the department store. I've gotten several compliemnts on it form my American friends when they've seen it. It's a labor of love and a beautiful coat.

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Steve tailored the fit just the way I wanted, went above and beyond to determine the finer points of the pattern to get the pockets, seams to all come together just right! His feedback and suggestions are stellar and his prices/payment schedule are reasonable. What more can you ask? I cannot thank Steve enough. If you're ever in the market for a Peter Davison Frock coat (or even a brown varient one!) then Steve's the man to see.
I'm often asked by my less costume-inclined friends "Was all the months of waiting, all the resoucres spent, all the stress of going beige colorblind worth it for this coat?" You Bet. No Question!

Customer review - Bespoke Frock Coat

Good evening, and welcome to the third intallment in my series of rambling and disjointed customer reviews of the work of Steve Ricks. Tonight, the brown Edwardian Frock Coat, made to the Five Coat pattern, as documented elsewhere within this blog.

Just before I inflict my review proper onto the eyes and minds of Steve’s readers however, I feel I should preface by outlining just what an odessy my search for the perfect frock coat has been. In fact, it’s been roughly twenty-six years, if you’d count that as an odessy. A correct, genuine, fitted frock coat of the style of the fifth Doctor is, as I discovered, a very, very elusive beast.

1984: At age 13, my frock coat fetish was already apparant, compounded by the nightly appearance on my TV of the fifth Doctor, who was wearing exactly what I was after (well, except for the piping. And all that beige.) Boy, I wanted a frock coat of that cut and length. My Mum bought me a duffle coat. Wasn't really the same thing.

1985: I got my hands on one of those mac-type coats from the op-shop. Dark blue, it was, and not, even in the eyes of the most generous observer, remotely a frock coat. But it was long. I painted light blue piping on it for some reason. With model paint. That was the end of that one.

Later in 1985: I somehow aquired another men’s coat, this time a wool overcoat, again dark blue. I honed my legendary self-taught sewing skills (all by hand, the complex mysteries of the sewing machine eluded me then, as they continue to now), by changing the lapels, adding darts, adding pockets, and generally imbuing it with my own personal improvements and modifications until eventually, it was wrecked.

1990: I had been a stagehand at a local theatre company, and the costume maker had made some (what I thought of as) very passable frock coats, by buying an old two-piece suit, and fashioning the skirt from the trousers. I tried this twice. It didn't work.

1992: I became aquainted with a lady who was an actual seamstress, and convinced her to make me what was essentially a knee-length black jacket. I can’t express how overjoyed I was with this garment. My search was apparantly over! Tragically, I wore it on New Years’ Eve, and I handed it to a friend of mine so I could engage in some fisticuffs with a frightful cad who had besmirched me. Later, my friend claimed to have no memory of ever having seen the coat. It was lost to the vortex.

1995: By this stage, I was in posession of something I hadn't previously had. A job. One day, in a moment of madness/clarity, I decided, to hell with this. I'm going to commission a professional tailor to make me one of these, once and for all. I mean, how expensive could it possibly be? About eight weeks and a month's pay later, I had what was, in essence, a much better-made version of my lost black coat. I travelled the galaxies in that coat. It was still not an actual frock coat, merely a knee-length jacket, but for now, it would do.

1999 (approximately): I had a go at making my own six coat. That didn't work out so well either.

2000: At this point, lifting so many liquid-filled cylindrical weights had made my already muscular physique positively herculean, so the coat was beginning to become a tad tight. One day I tried to tie my shoelace, and couldn't. It was time for another coat. The same tailor made me another, in a dark plumb, just do be a little different. I still have that one. Again though, no nearer the mark ...

2003: I don’t know why, but I commissioned that same tailor to make me a Six Coat (I’ve put this guy’s kids through college. One of them’s a gaenecologist). I don’t recommend anybody try this (at least, not until Steve finally adds it to his repetoir). It won’t work.

2005: I decided to finally design my difinitive, ultimate, once-and-for-all, no messing-around-this-time, frock bloody coat. I drafted several sketches, and assembled a number of photographs.
I presented all these to my tailor, who by now was literally rubbing his hands together whenever I walked into his shop. Even this coat though, fell short of what I was after, largely due to my own design. I had drawn the pockets at a rakish angle (mistake), and had made the skirt too flared (another mistake).

I looked like a drunk ballerina.

2007: I bought a genuine Edwardian frock coat from eBay.

The arms were the correct length, which was a surprise given the stature of gents from those days, but it was a bit tight under the arms.
To have it altered would have far eclipsed the fifty bucks it cost to buy. That one's in the wardrobe as well. Soon I'll have to buy another wardrobe and write “frock coats” on the door.

I probably won’t though.

2009: I approached a well-known online clothier to make me a fifth Doctor coat, only in brown.
This is really where I learned how deceptively difficult it is to achieve the frock coat shape. I sent their versions back a couple of times to be remade, as, although they were tailored to an impeccable standard, as all their products are, the shape, cut and drape were falling seriously short of what I wanted.
Eventually, they made one which, although still not what I was ultimately after, was a perfectly adequate frock coat.

That one now serves as an understudy ...

2010: Enter Steven Ricks.

For anybody still reading, I had high hopes for Steve’s version for a couple of reasons. Firstly, of course, he has made me stuff before, and I think, by now, his aptitude as a tailor is beyond question. Secondly, and most importantly, he is a fan. In the past I’ve drawn sketches, supplied photographs, even given DVDs, and people still don't get it right. But a fan already knows what it is you're after, because he's been studying it for years as well.

As luck would have it, Steve was already working on a pattern and a commission for the Fifth Doctor's coat. I approached him, asking whether he would be prepared to make one of a different colour scheme, and also with a bit of a free hand, regards the lining. I think he found the wider parameters of the brief a bit liberating, as rather than being a slave to screen accuracy and colour matching fifty-seven thousand beige swatches, he could just do whatever the hell he liked. My main objective was that the lining should be bright, and striking. So that people would say, “Oh yes, there’s a guy in a brown coat over there. Who care - HOLY CRAP! WHAT THE HELL SORT OF LINING IS THAT FOR A BROWN COAT??” I mean, who hasn’t started screaming insanely when they've spotted somebody with a funny lining? I know I have, it’s perfectly normal.

Anyway, I should probably touch upon the point of the review for at least a second: the Coat. I should begin with the above-mentioned lining, for it's here Steve really let his tailoring hair down. One day, I emailed him to ask how it was going, and to enquire as to whether he’d found a lining option to show me. He replied, saying that he’d just been working on the lining, and had gone just a little bit mental with it. Adding, ominously, that I would either love it or hate it.

What ultimately emerged was an exquisite patchwork of gold, silver and green. The bulk of the lining is gold silk, with the curved fiddleback panels accented with silver brocade paisely, alternating with the breast panels, which are also silver. The four inside pocket welts are highlighted with gold, and the inner sleeves are a bottle green chinese floral silk, for God’s sake. The green silk also appears in flashes on the outside of the coat, under the pockets, and even, unexpectedly, a panel under the collar. And here was I expecting yellow! Incidentally, I showed a pic of the lining Steve had sent me to a female friend of mine, and she said simply, “Trust this man.”

The juxtaposition I intended has certainly been achieved, albeit via a slightly different route, as the outside of the coat is is roughly-textured, heavy brown wool. I wanted a fabric that didn’t seem immediately pristine or formal, and Steve sent me several swatches to choose from (I should also mention here that along with the various swatches, he also included some actual pockets which he’d made to show me how they’d eventually look. I still have them, although I have no idea what to do with them). Admittedly, when I first opened that long-awaited FedEx box, I was struck by how heavy the fabric was, and was initially concerned that it may appear more of an overcoat than a frock coat. However, I’ve been flourishing about in it quite a bit, and that's not the case. It’s around the same weight as tweed.

Steve and I locked horns (no pun intended. Alright, pun intended) over the buttons. I had initially specified simple tortoiseshell or horn buttons, in keeping with the inconspicuous outer shell which houses this shocking elegance inside. Steve, however, came up with some ornate gold Italian metal buttons with a beautiful and intricate design, which I felt were a little too fancy for what I had in mind. And so, the battle of Accomplished Tailor versus Artless Primate began, and eventually Steve aquiessed. It must have been like removing an elegant spiral candle from a wedding cake and putting a hammer on there in it’s place to Steve, but, in his never-ending quest to satisfy the infuriating customer, he sought out some genuine horn buttons, at no small cost to himself. He still prefers the metal ones, though.

And so, finally, I have a frock coat I am happy with. And it only took twenty-six years. Slightly longer than it took to read this review. Luckily, you don't have to wait that long, however. To my knowledge, there is nobody out there who can compete with this guy in terms of quality and accuracy. If there is, I'd certainly like to see it. I hate to conclude this review on such an obvious note, but I feel there's no more appropriate way than to paraphrase the opening title sequence of the A-team.
“If you have a problem, If no-one else can help, and if you can afford him, maybe you can hire ... Steven Ricks.”

S21 trousers - customer review

Last year I made a number of Five Trousers,
and one of my clients, Chris, kindly wrote a review of his Season 21 Trousers.
Here’s what he had to say.

The one thing that always surprised me when talking about the Fifth Doctor’s costume was that no-one seemed to be able to notice the difference between his first and last season costumes. To me it was blatent but to most it wasn’t. I had tried to commision other well known costume makers in the past to make the last season trousers but was either told that they were all the same material(!) or that there wasn’t enough interest in them to bother.

You can imagine how thrilled I was when I found Steve on-line who not only could see the difference in the materials but had produced an amazing replica material that looked spot on. Of course I had to have a pair!

Steve was amazing. He took time to keep me informed every step of the way. If there was going to be a small delay I would receive an email explaining why and I felt like I was never in the dark.
 The turn around time on the trousers was amazingly fast, especially for the quality of the finished pair! Feeling a bit like a kid at Christmas, I felt over excited when they arrived and once they were unwrapped, I couldn’t wait to put them on. I was slightly concerned whether they would fit (doing measurements over emails could go wrong I thought) but they were perfect.

Extremely well made and finished with a real professional eye for detail. As soon as I had them on, the DVDs and photos all came out and I can honestly say that they are as near to the originals in accuracy as I think it would be possible to get.

 It’s a pleasure to deal with Steve!