By: Nicolai Lonne
We gave our jacket lovers one job:
Produce a comprehensive review on bespoke leather jackets.
Our review team always considers durability, price, quality, and value in their reviews.
At some point in time, any guy imagines getting a leather jacket. For some, it’s the image and the style that exhibit a cool factor, like James Dean or Tom Hardy. For others, the versatility or the practicality of leather has an appeal above all else.
But finding the right jacket is never easy and often it’s the reason more people, particularly men, never end up getting one. Some might find something in a vintage shop that fits somewhat well at a price modest enough to swallow. More often than not, it’s a bucket list kind of item.
The Jacket Maker has been remedying the market for new leather jackets, helping people by offering custom-made products at prices not really seen before. And they’re doing it online in a way that’s surprisingly quick and easy.
One member of our team at DiveIn, with the Easy Rider dream, tried out this process and the resulting product to see what kind of quality you can get for a customized leather jacket for less than $250.
What Should You Expect
To say there’s probably a style for most demands on the Jacket Maker’s webpage isn’t exaggerating. From Bomber to trench, hooded to biker style, the men’s catalog is comprehensive. After figuring out what piece of leather outerwear speaks to your sense of style, sizing becomes the most important, critical component of the purchase.
And at this point, the Jacket Maker’s dynamic homepage really does avail itself quite well.
Choosing the product brings up 2 options for sizing: pick a size and hope for the best, click “made to measure” for the bespoke option, and use the Sizebay virtual fitting room module for great, easy-to-see results.
Here, Sizebay stands out as a great sizing module, proving options for specific measurement inputs as well as visual indicators that change with each input. Change the size of your chest and the torso that reflects your body shape changes too. In the end, you’ll have a representation that resembles your proportions.
Picking a size without seeing a sizing model here doesn’t make sense. The whole concept of TJM is to give you a better-fitting leather jacket, and for $30 extra it’s worth investing the extra cash to get your exact body shape.
And you can add other details. If you’re a little more buff in the arms, add it when ordering, and the tailors will customize. Do this by measuring around your forearms or biceps.
How It Fits
The jacket that came to us was measured after one body type. It fit as well as hoped and automatically inspired images of cruising down the freeway on a Triumph Bonneville.
But to stress the value of the bespoke option, the made-to-measure option fits the individual perfectly, but not another DIVEIN member with the same body form. The reason: his forearms and biceps are thicker.
If the arms are too constricted, it will be more uncomfortable and disappointing. You can always send it back to the company tailors, apparently at no cost, so that they can alter it accordingly, but this hassle is easily avoidable.
From this experience, we recommend measuring the circumference of your wrists and arms and adding it to the order details by clicking on the “CUSTOMIZE THIS PRODUCT” button. It only cost a small $30 extra.
In fact, you can get in contact with a “consultant” who will help guide you through any customizing hurdles that are preventing you from getting the made-to-measure fit.
Seeing how the jacket matches the shape of its master’s movements, including when open as well as zipped up, is also what you expect from an animal hide garment. Flexing and even making mock contortions to test the second-skin nature of a custom-fit is the first you do. And here, it actually proves the concept rather convincingly.
The Way a Leather Jacket Should Be
After going through the easy, custom-made process, and getting the Dean Brown Leather Biker Jacket–within the promised delivery time–we were impressed by the quality of the hide.
For the price, expectations were not elevated to something like a Tom Ford or even a Schott jacket, but for $240 they were far and away exceeded by what arrived. The leather has a creamy texture, with a tough yet soft structure. It’s the kind of hide that you can’t–strangely enough–stop caressing.
Again, it’s not the supple leather of a $1000-plus jacket, but it could look like one. Especially, when matched with the seams and zippers. Flexing and stressing for defects or imperfections, the zippers are made to survive continued, violent use and the seams don’t give way under pulling and pushing with unusual force.
In the end, after a week’s worth of abuse and typical use driving and biking, the jacket yielded only the promise of gaining a better feel and aesthetic quality–as good leather jackets should.
With a new set of expectations, The Jacket Maker should expect another customer or two from DIVEIN after the whole experience of finding the right jacket, getting it measured, receiving it, and wearing it. This bespoke option is worth it in spades.
Get yourself this jacket from The Jacket Maker
No Need to Go Faux
A synthetic leather jacket, also known as a fake or a feather jacket, doesn’t cost that much. Some people might also have a hard time recognizing a good fake for what it is. At first. But synthetic materials, without fail, will always break down rapidly from any and all abrasion. And this is easy to spot.
On the other hand, we expect this Dean Brown jacket to age nicely, with some care given down the road at some time. That’s what a decent leather jacket will do, and that’s what this one will do well.
For $240 you cannot expect to get too many quality jackets, let alone a leather jacket that you’ve wanted for most of your adult life. The Jacket Maker deserves high marks for making this possible.
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