Denim is in demand nowadays, I think I can wear this costume for any season that I want.
That's good news, considering that there's a cheap(ish) Halloween Marty McFly jacket from Singapore that I wear on an almost constant basis. Can't roll up the sleeves on it but it's great to just wear it for other things. PM me if you want a link to it.
They did release another version called the future edition with much thinner lines so they would be even more accurate
I just bought one recently, that actually fits me (for a change, I gotta lose weight....). Is it still inaccurate? The Max Cady one still looks more accurate to me. It doesn't look at all like a pattern of thin black lines, it just looks like a thick grey line.
What vest did you buy exactly? And what is the Max Cady jacket? What about his under shirt? I believe he has a tshirt and a button down. Nike Bruins are stupid hard to find and expensive.
Edit: I believe I located the Max Cady jacket. It looks quite nice. What are the criticisms of it?
Second edit: Wow, I had no idea this shop existed, Max Cady. So they are a replica shop? The denim jacket, vest, and shirt all look great. Besides price, what is there to criticize about them?
Max Cady are alright, but the vest and jacket are inaccurate. For some reason he insisted that the vest must be red this year, when it was orange last year. Otherwise it would probably be perfect. The jacket is a decent replica, but still gets some things wrong. It's very clean and smooth and flat. There's no banding around the buttons, so even if you stone-wash it, you can't get the same effect around the buttons because it's completely flat. The colours are alright but I think the blue is too dark.
Overall Headgoonie make superior products, but the prices and availability outside of Japan, and the fact that their vest and jackets are a limited release that you had to have pre-ordered months ago, is INSANE. I just barely managed to afford the vest by contacting them and coming up with enough cash in time for the vest, which was 47,700 yen (43,200 yen plus 4,500 for shipping, plus 10% GST as well since I live in Australia). The jacket would have been even more expensive. Max Cady's stuff is only half that.
I haven't tried the Max Cady button-down shirt, though. Mine is a Shah Safari. I'm not sure which is more accurate to be honest, because the Shah Safari has lines in between the black squares, and Max Cady's appear to just have grey lines, which is how it looks in the movie. The black squares definitely stand out more than the lines in between them.
You could try emailing Headgoonie and asking them if they have any vests or jackets left, but they only speak in Japanese which means you need to translate everything, and it takes a bit of back-and-forth. Also they're scheduled to ship in like, 2-3 weeks from now.
Earlier in the month (As in nearly the start of the month) I emailed Headgoonie directly (miki-o@headgoonie.jp) and asked about their vests, if they had any in L or XL. I got linked a special order form on their website so I could order it, but it expires after a week, so if you can't come up with the cash in time then you're out of luck. It was something of a miracle I was able to order a vest at all, I can't imagine I'll ever get to wear their denim jacket. So I'm currently seeing what I can do with the Max Cady to weather it a bit.
As for the shoes, I've tried Cortez, Bruin Vapors, and I'm going to try painting a pair of Court Royales. You need to use Angelus paints because finding ones in exactly the right colours is almost as hard as finding the real thing. Don't try the Blazer Lows, they're not very accurate at all. They have a red bit at the back, but it's completely the wrong shape. And they're red on the inside. I think it would be better to get a pair of white Court Royales and apply red Angelus paint to them.
If all else fails, the 2015 rereleases of the Bruins (in exactly the right colours) are on StockX. But I haven't tried it yet. I'll try putting in a bid for them at $110 in US dollars, which plus shipping and GST is still going to be a lot. But I don't know if they'll ever send them out to me or if they still have them in the first place. It all seems too good to be true, considering they go for like a thousand dollars normally and only in very small sizes that haven't been completely swallowed by demand three years ago....
I'd say go with Max Cady for the most part, it won't be perfect but it'll definitely be good enough to fool 99% of people. I think he said he's getting more stock in next month too, and who knows he might change the colour of the vest back someday. I hope so because he ships things from Japan to Australia at a phenomenal speed. It took less than a week to get it.
It's like there's this cost-to-accuracy ratio. Max Cady are in the middle, they're expensive but still somewhat affordable depending on your budget. Magnoli and Headgoonie are at the far end of the spectrum and it took all I had just to buy the vest. You get what you pay for, I suppose.
Bit of a long reply I know, but hopefully some of it will help.