The Research:
The jacket base:
It's a cropped, straight hem jacket with a shawl collar. No princess seams or yoke. I was unable to find a suitable base so I had to pattern and build my own. I priced garment-grade leather at Tandy's and decided to use a synthetic PU option I bought on Etsy for $28/yd. The lining was just some black satin I had on hand. The hardest part was the binding that goes around the entire edge of the jacket - had to use pliers to get the needle through.
I started with the pocket on the front of the jacket which has a field of square studs. It was pretty impossible to go through the leather and still achieve the level of accuracy I needed with so many studs butted up against each other. In the end I opted to fold all the prongs under with pliers and use jewelry/metal glue. This was by far the most time-consuming part of construction (thank you Eileen for helping!!)
There are 16 different styles/sizes of studs on this jacket - it's ridiculous. The only one I couldn't find an exact replica for were the 3-sided pyramids on the upper back and neck. I found short ones to use, but they should have been taller/spikier. How many studs total? I used 2,163.
The jacket ended up weighing about 5 pounds - and the wooden hanger I carried it on broke. One intentional change I made was having the chains connect to the center back D-ring instead of passing through it (so they wouldn't slide around). In total after 2 wearings and 1 suitcase packing I lost a total of 4 studs.
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