Tonight, we dine in HELL !! -- Cipriani's ??

This one feels different. I don't know exactly why, but it does. I'm feeling anxious for some odd reason.

Normally, when I start down a costume development path, there's a lot more research I need to do, a lot more vendors to contact, a lot more effort.

This time, the items just fell into place - Am I getting this good, or is some type of synchronicity afoot?

• Andrea is doing the cloak - fabric will be a heavy wool and color will be a scarlet red.
  
• JJ is doing the brooch, vambraces, greaves, sandals and helmet. I'm now in the queue and the armor should be done in the 3rd or 4th quarter of this year.
• I purchased the falcata sword from MonstersInMotion.com. It should ship on May 18th.
  
• David is doing the leather Speedo and shoulder harness. The harness will be sent down to Andrea for fitting the cloak.

David? Who's David?

When I got my Faramir pants, Reg cut them too long. Rather than send them back and wait another few months for him to return them, I figured that I could bring them to some leather garment repair place and just get them cut and hemmed. Nope.

I went to about four places and each one wanted to charge about $100 to trim and hem. There was no way I was going to spend that money (plus NYC sales tax!!), so I kept looking. I tried using superpages.com and looked up "leather clothing". In addition to the places I found in the paper yellow pages, I came across some other leather clothing places. Leather fetish clothing places.

Well, well, well ...

Two of the places I called, The Leather Man and Rubio Leather, just didn't sit right with me. They weren't nasty. Something was just off-putting about them. The best analogy I can give is when you walk into a hair salon/barber shop and just get a bad vibe. It's best to get out of there. And FAST. Then I called David Menkes Custom Leather Wear. David sounded like a really nice guy and I explained what I needed. "Sure, no problem. Would you like to set up an appointment now, or do you need to check your calendar?"

I set up an appointment and went down to 19th Street the next day. I was expecting an actual store, but David works out of a HUGE third-floor apartment with an outside garden. I was really impressed. And David is one of the nicest, most creative people I've met so far - in fact, I was thinking to myself, "I've found the leather equivalent of Andrea!" His work area was neat as a pin, he had a wall of leathers on rolls and a rack of completed and in-process items on the side. As it turned out, David was also a very big LOTR fan, although he felt that Peter Jackson didn't do the books justice. He also picked up right away the Faramir pants were Faramir pants. Damn, he is good! A couple of snips and a run through the sewing machine and we were done. And the price was extremely reasonable - about one-fifth of what was being asked for in the other establishments. I was looking at some of the items he was making, how clean the cuts were and how straight the hems were sewn on everything. No mess anywhere.

When I was planning my vendors for this venture, I immediately thought of David. He's a perfectionist. After all, if you're getting this type of leather clothing, you had better go to an expert. I gave David a call and explained to him what I was looking for, plus I sent him a PDF of some shots of Gerard Butler and Michael Fassbender in costume (or lack thereof). He had already seen the movie. Twice.

A little bit about David - he's a well-built guy with tattoos, a closely cropped beard, bright blue eyes, a septum piercing, and an absolutely wicked sense of humor. He had chuckled when I first told him what I was looking for.

"What are you doing about the CHEST? I hope you've been working out!"

"Of course I have - I'm not going to get confused with David Wenham, but I'm in good shape. Do you think I'd be asking for a leather Speedo if I couldn't carry it off?"

"You should SEE some of the people that come in here!"

We had a good laugh on that one. I've already seen him for the initial measurement session and I've picked out the leather I'd like to use. David, like Andrea, works pretty quickly, so Andrea should have the shoulder harness to fit the cloak in a short time. And, by the way, he was quite pleased with the results of my chest and abs workouts.

Looking at the pictures of the falcata sword I've ordered, I may also ask David to re-do the sword belt and scabbard. He'll have the actual pieces as a pattern and I know he'll have fun making THAT! After all, if I'm wearing a custom leather speedo, I don't want to put on a cheap leather/pleather ill-fitting belt.

I realized that this was the first costume that didn't involve several layers of fabric and/or leather between me and everyone else. This was basically just me. And a cloak. Even with the workouts and staying slim, it hit me that I still had a bit of nasty body-image memory to overcome. Well, I said to myself, you're not the little fat kid any more ... Spartan.

And I don't feel as anxious now ...