THE TAILORED JACKET FOR MEN

My graduation was due in a month’s time and so I thought of making something cool and unique that would make me stand out and represent the degree I was graduating with: the apparel and fashion design degree. I had studied so many things in campus: from economics to childcare to human physiology and so many other courses that clearly I wasn’t cut for. For four years I struggled with campus life and so I thought I’d make it a special moment for me during my graduation ceremony. I set out on a quest to make a unique outfit that would clearly distinguish me as a creative person and the go to guy when it came to looking awesome. I made it my priority to design something awesome for myself. After many nights of sketching and researching,

I came up with what I thought was an awesome outfit that was fit to grace this long awaited day. It was an African inspired casual men’sblazer that was to go with grey pants and “Ankara” laced up men’s shoes. I looked at my sketches and a smile of satisfaction ran across my lips.

I had actually learned something in campus: I thought to myself. The only thing left for me to do was to make what I had visualized. I couldn’t wait to start and so I went directly to my best teacher. The one I had relied on for my four years to provide answers when I had none, to open ways where there seemed to be none and to bring hope to my hopeless self: Google. With a laptop, internet and a motivated self, I set out to quench my thirst and relieve myself of this heavy burden of ambition that had taken a toll on my tiny self.

“How to make men’s tailored jacket”. Was the phrase I put into the notorious search box which had now become a verb, google?Initial results came by and as usual went to the first option, then second, then third, fourth, fifth…..and on the 20^th results I still hadn’t gotten what I was looking for. After spending what I thought was a few hours, Icouldn’t find what I had hoped for. Even YouTube had disappointed me, which is usually very rare but I was still grateful to it for the countless free music videos I had gotten from previous visits. It was then that I decided to take my search skills the classic way, getting my hands dirty by literally digging for info. Combine ambition, a large ego and a whole lot of motivation, what do you get? I’lllet you answer that so you can know how I was feeling. I was just getting started.

Alas! I had had what I thought was an epiphany, a clear direction to the quest of my dreams. I had cracked it. That stupid procedure for making a man’s tailored jacket. I picked up a five shilling coin from the table of my room: the only cash I had between me and poverty (cliché) and bought myself a beautiful shiny “panda” branded razor blade. Forget seam rippers and all the other tools designers use to rip off bad seams, at that moment that razor blade was the most important thing in my life.

The next step was the big one. As my friend would put it, it required balls of steel to pull it off. I was faced with the same puzzle that the mice were faced with of tying a bell to the cat. I could literally feel the pain of what would happen if I messed up. My plan was to steal one of my dad’s sports jackets, rip it apart and put it back together. You’re thinking that it was an easy task simply because you don’t know my father. Let me give you a brief picture of the kind of man he was…think of (that guy) from the movie unthinkable or BruceWillis from one of his action movies…yeah that is my dad but without the guns and a cameraman to film him.

Now I was in his wardrobe selecting amongst several of his jackets that had neatly been ironed and hung in his wardrobe. There was this one beautifully shaped jacket I had admired for so long. It had  well-shaped side seams, perfect fit in the shoulders, beautiful flat lapels and one of finest sewing I had ever seen. It was hard to resist it. That’s the one I took.

Smuggling it out of his bedroom felt like an American spy on Russian soil during the cold war that had just discovered Russia’s secret and was fleeing with it to back to America. As I sat on my bedroom floor with my shiny new razor blade holding the helpless sports jacket, my heart was throbbed, my hands were sweating, my eyes had turned red and I could smell my own sweat. Despite all this, I knew there was work to be done, something to be cut, something to be stitched but most importantly something to be LEARNT!....

To cut the long story short, that’s how I came to learn how to make the men’s tailored jacket. Here is a picture of what I did…cool huh?