Okay, I realize I might not be making myself too popular here – what with being new and all –, but I've actually had good experiences with them. So here’s the story of dealing with Celebswear. I hope you'll believe me that I'm not a sockpuppet or in any way affiliated with them.
About a year ago, I decided that I would like a leather jacket again, seeing as I hadn’t owned one for several years. The last one got lost at a concert and I loved that jacket very much.
So I thought about what I needed: What I needed was a
jacket for every day wear. Nothing superfancy. The jacket could get shredded and damaged for all I cared. So I was certainly not going to pay more than $300 for a jacket. I read around online and saw nothing but bad reviews for Celebeswear. I was very, very hesitant to say the least, but for some odd reason I thought to myself “Ah, what the hell” and ordered a jacket.
Since then, I have bought another jacket from them. I will chronicle the purchases as good as I can, pointing out both positive and negative.
So here’s a hopefully complete and informative review of how I experienced them. Also, I hope to include a couple of tips and tricks how to avoid the most common things-that-have-gone-wrong with them. And if you don’t want to read all the text, there’s a Too-long-didn’t-read section at the end with the dos and don’ts.
The Website and the Company
As many have pointed out, Celebswear aren’t exactly the most honest guys when it comes to showing off their merch. At the point when I went for my first jacket,
most jackets were still advertised by using pictures I’ve either seen elsewhere or were just movie stills. This seems to have improved somewhat, but I can see why people aren’t impressed.
They actually stock a lot more jackets than you’d expect at first, as the main index is randomizing their product and some don’t even show up. The Smallville Jacket they have in red or black, but the black one I haven’t been able to find. However, I have discovered that they have a pretty nifty search function that suggests items from their catalogue. So it might be worth checking out.
They seem to own
several businesses, as I’ve gotten return e-mails from esire.org as well as celebswear.com and the second jacket is labelled petorucci.com.
The Merchandise
Very quickly, I decided that I wanted a jacket that wasn’t your stock jacket, seeing as I seem to have a thing for black leather jackets. They just don’t seem to be all that awesome otherwise with the exception of a Snake Plissken leather jacket, which must be brown. I decided on a Wolverine jacket, because I am a big fan of the X-Men and the movie jacket of Wolverine’s is always a treat to look at. In the end, I decided on the following.
- A black Wolverine jacket
- It needed side-pockets
- It needed inside pockets
- The stripes on the sleeves all had to be red
The second time around, I went for this:
- A black Smallville leather jacket
- Instead of the S-Shield, it needed a custom logo that I based off of another design and modified heavily to match one of my favourite t-shirts.
- Again, it needed side pockets and inside pockets.
- Also, it needed zippered cuffs. I am not sure if they were standard on the series’ jacket, but I pointed them out.
Since they offer to make custom jackets, I went for that option and wrote them an e-mail.
The Customer Service
I got a quick response from a staff member calling himself Paul Anderson. I
quickly doubted that that was his real name, seeing as his English was poor. Here’s an excerpt from an e-mail they sent me.
You see what I mean, right?
During the ordering of the second jacket, I dealt with someone calling herself Amanda Johnson. Now, I can’t confirm whether or not this is the same person, but their
English is similarly bad. Sometimes, they misunderstand questions or give answers in a really weird sentence structures. However, I believe they’re trying to do their best. But again, I don’t think Amanda was her real name. If it was a her to begin with. So basically, I had no idea who I was dealing with all the way through. That should have scared me off, but somehow, it didn’t. I realize that many of you would consider this a stupid thing to do – hell, I sometimes thought I was being stupid about it – but I decided that I would, in fact, place an order.
Either way, the response I got was that my jackets could be made and that it can be made rather quickly.
The Ordering
I was prudent enough to not trust their English language skills, so I
drew a very crude Photoshop-mock-up of what I wanted my jacket to look like. Basically, I took the picture they had on their site and drew arrows to various portions of the jacket, indicating a colour or another change. I recommend doing that.
I also d
idn’t trust their ability to convert from metric to inches, so I did the conversion myself and sent them both measurements that I had converted myself. I went to get my
measurements at a local seamstress to make sure the jacket would fit. This I recommend doing anyways, because even if their jackets are cheap, I would have felt bad if it didn’t fit. They ask for only a few measurements, but I sent them the complete measurements for a jacket, sleeves and everything.
The first time around, this went without a hitch and I got my jacket quickly. The second time, it was a bit more complicated. I use an e-mail for all things ordering and one to actually converse. This created some confusion. So I recommend that you use the same e-mail address for everything that deals with them. Make a conscious point of that.
The Payment
Celebswear uses a payment service called CCNow. Why they do that is beyond me. CCNow doesn’t do Paypal, so you have to sue your credit card. There are few reviews for the site itself and its function eludes me. I think it’s supposed to be a paypal-like service. It’s definitely
not an escrow service. So you pay on CCNow, get a receipt by e-mail. Remember that order-number well. Because Celebswear, for all the things support, needs that order number and your e-mail-address.
The second time I ordered, I used a different e-mail-address here. I sent them the blueprints for my jacket via address #1, but paid via address #2. The money went through, but the jackets never followed. And this is where you need to be very attentive.
If you don’t get your jacket within, say, a month, go talk to them. Because if you don’t, they’ll just keep the money and from the looks of it, you will never hear from them again. So, again, u
se the same e-mail address for everything.
The Delivery
They deliver
quickly and their jackets are safely tucked away in a second bag, similar to those you’ll find on a suit jacket. They get folded often a couple of times, so they seem to be rather scrunched up at first. But seeing as they deliver rather quickly, the jackets aren’t in there long enough to be permanently buggered up.
The packages ship out of Pakistan, which is very probably where the jackets are manufactured. And I suspect that they’re based in Pakistan, too.
The Jacket
So here’s the interesting part, right? The jacket itself. My first time around, the jacket arrived quickly. I realized that it was a
tight fit at first. So I took my measuring tape and measured the jacket again. They make the jacket to your
exact specifications, not allowing for a piece of clothing in between jacket and skin. So
adjust your measurements accordingly. What’s nice, though, is that the leather moves exactly to the point where your body moves and no further. The tightness took about a day or two of getting used to.
I wore the jacket almost every day for a year, obviously skipping sunny days. The leather is
good quality. Not the best leather I’ve ever come across but decent. After a year, the black leather still looks good, the
red has faded a bit and there’s a couple of scrapes on it. It has served me well and it’s a good jacket. The Wolverine Jacket did get damaged once, though. I had hung it on a chair at a bar. After I had a couple of drinks, I wanted to leave to go to another bar to drink some more. So I tugged at it rather roughly. It got stuck on something, so I did the only drunken logical thing to do and tugged harder. That’s when I
ripped the lining open. But it was easily fixable and it has held up ever since. It’s still wearable and only shows minor distress.
This is probably the point where I should address this.
The smell is there, yes. But it dissipates quickly. After about a week of wearing and having it hung on a coathanger, it smells the way a leather jacket should smell.
The part with the buttons falling off, I cannot second. This might – however – be because I
never went for one of their mass-produced jackets. So my jackets are one-offs and there was probably put more effort into it. The seems are really good and the zippers hold up.
The Verdict
And this concludes my lengthy review of Celebswear and quite probably their sister-companies. For fancy jackets I will go to someone else and pay more money. But if you’re after a more extravagant jacket that can suffer a bit, then Celebswear is your place to go, I would say.
And to sum this up, here’s the promised tl;dr-section.
DO
- Use one e-mail address for everything.
- Opt for a custom-made jacket to avoid the mass-produced jacket.
- Get measurements taken from a seamstress.
- Add inches or centimetres where needed. They will make the jacket exactly according to your measurements.
- Draw a blueprint. Even shoddy photoshopping where an arrow points at a part of the jacket where you.
- Keep track of your order. If you haven’t gotten your product within a month, get in contact with them and mention your e-mail address and CCNow order number in every mail.
DON’T
- Trust their English.
- Trust their names to be what you read on screen.
- Trust their ability to do conversions from metric to imperial or vice versa.
- Use more than one e-mail address to deal with them.
- Trust their mass-produced jackets.
If you want me to, I can take pictures of the jackets. That’s not a problem. Let me know.
lol
