0.0.3 – Memory Jacket; Planned Approach

This will be a long post with three main parts:

1. Sketches/concept updates
2. How I plan to get the thing made
3. Costs tally – how much I’ve spent

1 – Sketches/Concept Updates

After more sketching this past week I plan to move in a different direction than the ‘Present Jacket’ I described in the last post. The ability to touch different fabrics, while mildly interesting, isn’t a meaningful enough concept to me that I would go out of my way to buy it. Therefore, I don’t want to spend resources producing it at this time.

So, let me introduce what will be our focus for the next several posts, at least: the Memory Jacket/Vest.

I’ve had this overall concept for a long time, probably at least a year. It’s a jacket (or vest), that comes with an Instax camera.

The jacket provides complementary hidden panels intended to display a gallery of the memories you’ve made via your Instax photos. The gallery will constantly shift, in appearance and meaning, as you add and remove photos. The photos are hidden in a secret pocket by default, but panels can be revealed and fixed in place to display the photos to others.

The choice to symbiotically accompany a garment with a gadget echoes C.P. Company’s Urban Protection designs from the late 90s and early 00s. Some of my favorite-ever garments conceptually, these were designed by Moreno Ferrari (a dream of mine would be to find him and send him one of these photo jackets). These amazing jackets respectively came with a scooter (Move/Glove jacket), anti-fog flashlight (Light/Torch jacket), inflatable neck pillow (Atlas jacket), anti-smog mask (Metropolis, probably the most well-known) and digital voice recorder (REM jacket). All used the same materials: nylon Dynafil outer, and black fleece inner. You can google for more info if not already familiar with the series – careful not to confuse them with the more recent (2020s) re-releases of Urban Protection, which are, sorry to say, not nearly as conceptually interesting.

I find the Memory Vest/Jacket a compellingly blank concept. The photo gallery leaves plenty of space for the camera-wielder to put their unique stamp on the garment. One wearer might show off nature photos of their latest weekend camping trip; another might snap photos of a local concert, complete with post-show street food; another might take photos of their friends skating around the city… another, photos of their spouse or kids. The gallery is intended to reflect the viewer’s life and lets them display their photos in a way similar to analog photo albums. Because photos are kept physically close to the heart, rather than released into the digital aether to be bombarded with reactions, the result is consequently very human.

Here are some initial sketches of what the vest could look like (although I will probably be heading in the jacket direction):

I envisioned it being pretty similar to this vest I already have from Undercover from AW 2012. I’ve owned this for about 8-9 years, and have worn it layered under and over everything. I picked up a second identical vest, for whenever the first one wears out.

It’s warm, very lightweight, and has a fit that’s easy to layer under a jacket, or over a hoodie, or sweater as standalone outerwear.

Here’s what the Undercover vest looks like, photos taken from a listing on Vestiaire Collective:

There’s also a black colorway (which I don’t like quite as much – although I do like the tonal charcoal(?) tape around the armholes):

I explored going in the direction of a chore coat as well. This is more likely where we’ll end up, with some additional modifications.

I like the trompe l’oeil of a chore coat using hidden snap buttons overlaid with round velcro patches that resemble the typical black buttons, from a distance. This detail is yanked from snap closures on my Acronym HY-J3.

I’d like to embrace some more traditional fabrics here if I stay with the chore coat vibe. I think a dark green herringbone tweed with some raw edge detail, like this Kaptain Sunshine jacket, could work well. The frayed edge would also provide a fitting nod to the way that memories fray with time.

I’m realizing just how hard it is to make concrete design decisions. There are so, so many design possibilities, so it’s hard to decide whether to use buttons, a zipper, snaps, or some combination; whether to do a vest or a jacket; what materials to use, for example, ultra-light quilted down, or cotton moleskin, or a shiny nylon, or a duller-but-still-slightly-shiny nylon-cotton blend…

This is where having clear design values articulated would probably go a long way. Unfortunately, I’m not a professional; I don’t have those; I’m just guiding myself by feeling for this particular concept. Which I think is enough to start with, and hopefully I can articulate values later.

I want it to be modern, comfortable, and practical for day-to-day usage; I want it to speak to the past (evoking nostalgic memories, just like the photos the wearer will take). And otherwise, I just want it to be something I’d consider buying.

I have to narrow things down and try to make choices to the best of my ability.

I think I’d prefer to try going the chore coat route first, for two reasons:

1. I have some unique design ideas for the chore coat (shown in the sketch) that will help me put my stamp on things. I haven’t seen chore coats modernized like that before.
   1. (If I were to go the vest route, I don’t have too many ideas other than ripping off what I already consider to be the perfect vest 😅)
2. It’s easier for me to know what to expect when I browse tweed fabrics online. Whereas, technical fabrics are impossible to get a sense of from behind the screen. I have no plans or abilities to attend a fabric trade show at the moment and it’s not a priority for my aim of getting a garment made.
   1. I’ll try out these traditional fabrics and see how they work with my photo concept. Maybe I’ll try mixing tweed with nylon paneling, but that might stand out more than I’d planned.
   2. However, if I use tweed or moleskin, the fabric may be too thick to allow huge panels to be fully stowed away to display the gallery; instead, they may just have to be temporarily unzipped and pulled back to show the gallery.

I’m thinking of providing measurements that make the fit similar to my Rogue Territory Cruiser jacket, which is roomy enough for a hoodie underneath (note to self: remember to add an armpit gusset to the chore coat design! Second note to self, make a hood modeled off my Acronym J29 blazer and include that in the tech pack).

Some Inspo

I like this Oakley Nitro Fuel jacket, which has stow-away ‘strips’ (I assume for ski/snowboard passes) that come out from their hiding spots and are held in place on the front of the jacket with magnets. Honestly, this is the most promising approach for how to do the gallery for a chore coat yet, although it means displaying fewer photos on the front of the jacket. I will probably borrow/steal directly from it.

(This approach could even be replicated on a large scale on the back of the jacket to unfurl a giant photo gallery sheet from hiding. And I can see using paneling similar to the white shoulder paneling, on the chore coat design.)

OK – I just decided to buy this jacket secondhand for research purposes and to see how it functions in practice. It doesn’t hurt that I’ve been staring at this and another same-design Oakley (since sold) on Holsales for a while.

There are also a few others I saw on Holsales, which is an amazing photo resource for 00s functional-hidden-pocket technical jackets:

I don’t love the large-scale 3d chest pocket here on this Acronym, but throwing it in as a possible reference as well. Specifically, I don’t like that it’s 3D – it feels meh visually, and also, Polaroids are flat, so a 3D pocket provides no real design benefits.

2 – How I plan to get the thing made

From my research, I feel that trying to get a sample produced domestically will be too expensive for me. I don’t want to mess around with hiring freelance patternmakers or samplemakers, since I suspect I’ll spend too much with nothing to show for it.

So, instead, I will likely try to get a sample produced overseas, which is what many YouTubers and TikTokers seem to be doing themselves, when not sewing their own garments.

What I Currently Believe Needs To Be Done To Make A Sample

1. Crystal-Clear Design Concept. I’ve heard factories will produce whatever you tell them to. So if I want my vision to exist, I need to define that vision as clearly as possible. If I’m vague about anything, whether details, materials (fabric composition, weight, weave, etc), or measurements of any part of the garment, then that presents an opportunity for the factory to make their own choice… Probably a choice I didn’t expect or want.
2. Clearly Communicated Tech Pack. To my understanding (as someone who has never actually produced a tech pack) a tech pack is a set of information that communicates all the necessary details of the design. This includes measurements, visual details of the garment overall, zoomed-in diagrams/drawings of detailed parts of the garment, including what stitching to use, specific pocket design, reference photos for existing garments for design details, fabric choices, etc.
   1. To help with making the tech pack, I bought a bunch of digital assets from Seaggs, which I’d found on Reddit a while back, during their Black Friday sale. I can’t speak to the quality of it yet but will write about the assets once I have a chance to use them. This will hopefully give me a base to start with. I will also plan to research videos on making a tech pack, including Seaggs’ own.
   2. Once I prepare my best first attempt at the tech pack, I will probably hire a freelance tech pack maker to review it and point out any problems with it. But I don’t want to hire anyone to do the whole thing from scratch.
3. Finding A Few Factories. Find a few candidate factories and get quotes for samples.
4. Getting The Samples Produced. Communicate with the factories, send them the tech packs, produce the first round of samples, and possibly get revisions of the sample made. I intend to get the first samples made at multiple factories to compare.

The first two tasks alone are going to take a significant effort, I think.

I have a decent start on the first one, and a clear concept with the Memory Jacket. I also think it would be best to try to make the chore coat version first, either in a tweed or cotton moleskin. I will not attempt to make the pattern without shoulder seams like the J28, because I have no idea how to communicate/draw this unique pattern to a pattern-maker overseas.

3 – Costs Tally

I thought it would be helpful for myself and my readers to keep a running tally of costs during the project. Please note that this is a hobby project for me and I’m OK spending money on it to learn and have fun. I’m not trying to start a business.

1. Oakley Nitro Fuel vintage jacket, for research (incl. shipping): $212
   1. note that this was not necessary to purchase if I were trying to be on a shoestring budget. All the crucial design details could be grasped from reference photos alone. However, I want to try to do my homework here and make sure I’m happy with the functionality of the photo gallery concept before moving forward with a sample. Clothes don’t exist in photos alone, and so I want to feel confident about my idea in real life as well. Buying a jacket that already elegantly solved this design problem is a way to test that out in real life and see how it works.
2. Seaggs digital mockup/tech pack resources: $110
   1. also not technically necessary to purchase, but I view this as likely to save me a ton of time to learn certain tedious skills that I don’t want nor need to learn. I respect his hustle in providing these and selling them to people like me; hopefully, the product is worth the money.

Total spent so far: $332