So I asked Jonathan about the Mayhem jacket. I asked about the thickness of the padding, the hang and verticality of the arms, and the shoulder pads. Here is what he told me:
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Where do I start, Well First, I have the original Red and off white Denim jacket sample I fit Brad in in 1998. so I'm sewing off the original sample, that is how I get to my duplicates. When I make a jacket for a movie, I make it new they usually take it and age or distress it. As far as the way it hangs and fits on Brad and on you; that vary much depends on your size and his at the time. there is an action back this is for movement and they may have sewn the action back closed I don't know. the padding is the same thickness. there is only three that I use for that process. The other two are double and then triple the thickness.
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So I think here we are starting to find out the more we want really particular things here, we have to understand that a) these clothes are over 15 years old now, and b) these jackets are created new and then distressed by the costume department. Jonathan isn't involved in the film other than creating jackets as far as I can tell, so he simply does his job and then moves on. That's my impression anyway.
I'm a little unsure why the action back would be sewn closed, but possibly they requested it that way after the original pattern was created and he didn't remember. The man has worked on so many movies and is consistently pumping out work, we can't expect him to remember everything from 15+ years ago. As a graphic designer I have enough trouble remembering all the things I did 3 or 4 projects ago because of the volume of work I move through in a work week. Being a premier Hollywood leather worker has got to be busier than that. Or maybe he does remember and they really did sew it closed for some reason or another. You don't need a lot of movement for 2 short scenes in a film.
I have to say though, honestly, despite the fact that for whatever reason the action back is not screen accurate, I think it looks a lot cooler and it definitely allows for more mobility. I am happy with mine. I will say that I kind of like the stripes a bit thinner though, but it's not going to bug me that they're not the same. On my fabric sample he just drew the stripes in with pencil, I would think it's totally possible the original denim sample didn't have stripes so getting the exact same stripes probably just sort of fell away at some point after time had passed. The stripes on the current JALs are the same thickness as the padding, and the space between the stripes is equal to the size of one stripe. So it's a very uniform look across the whole jacket.
As for the padding, I think iamjwpc nailed it, it's probably due to packing it and moving it. It's 15+ years old after all. One of the things that drew me to JALs version and not something like SouulRevolver or whatever was the definition in the padding, so again, I personally prefer it that way. Hope that clears a few things up.