10.29.2018

Close Up on Suit Up! Aquaman (or, How I Got Rob in Pleather.)

Close Up on Suit Up! Aquaman (or, How I Got Rob in Pleather.) | oonaballoona by marcy harriell

Babe. DO. NOT. PUT. ME. IN. SPANDEX he said, in all caps. BABE. I replied, caps lock on: I GOT YOU. 

NO BABE YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND, I AM NOT WEARING SPANDEX. 

BABE I AM NOT GONNA PUT YOU IN SPANDEX YOU ARE GONNA LOOK AMAZING I GOT YOU

WE TALK IN INCREASING LEVELS OF ALL CAPS AROUND HERE BUT I MEAN LOOK AT THE RESULT

Close Up on Suit Up! Aquaman (or, How I Got Rob in Pleather.) | oonaballoona by marcy harriell

I *think* he ended up being down with it 😁

Close Up on Suit Close Up on Suit Up! Aquaman (or, How I Got Rob in Pleather.) | oonaballoona by marcy harriellUp! Aquaman | oonaballoona by marcy harriell

I'll tell you another thing: as the pieces came together, he was so down with this look, he demanded that I forge ahead with my idea of shoulder and hip gauntlets, when others were iffy on the extra-ness of it. I was like, EXTRA IS MY MIDDLE NAME. 

Babe, he assured me, if you see it in your head, do it. (We revert to lowercase, when encouragement warrants it.) And everyone ended up liking them once they were 3D.

Close Up on Suit Up! Aquaman | oonaballoona by marcy harriell

Also 3D: gloves! These things were flat and lifeless pieces of flannel backed pleather, and I was pretty mad at them, to tell you the truth. I wanted them to look like ocean waves, but they were flopping lifeless as a sad little kiddie pool, until I started folding them in frustration. Eureka! I made the folds permanent with some simple lines of stitching. Oh, and I attached them to combat gloves. And painted the whole shebang for depth. OH YEAH SPEAKING OF PAINT...

Close Up on Suit Up! Aquaman | oonaballoona by marcy harriell

Here's how I kept my no-spandex promise! Those are Levis, baby. Rob has about 20 pairs. I thought it would be very cool to take a little bit of biker/roadhouse/Momoa Aquaman (behold, Rob's weathered motorcycle boots), and mix him up with the classic green & gold Aquaman, by simply painting jeans to look as though they'd been underwater. I layered up some colors and went nuts on them with a tracing wheel dipped in gold paint. Rob liked the gold so much, he asked me to rub some of the paint into the creases of the jeans, "as highlights."

LIKE I SAID HE GOT SO INTO IT.

What he *wasn't* totally sold on was the color of the jacket. That burnished basketweave pleather...

Close Up on Suit Up! Aquaman (or, How I Got Rob in Pleather.) | oonaballoona by marcy harriell

...that Rob is displaying with SO MUCH BADASSERY...

Close Up on Suit Up! Aquaman (or, How I Got Rob in Pleather.) | oonaballoona by marcy harriell

...started out VERY! SHINY! GOLD! As you can tell, I am UBER EXCITED ABOUT THAT. Contrary to the smile captured by our awesome photographer, Rob was not of the same opinion. He's right, it's so wrong in its virgin form. I will say, in my defense, that our strange tv diet at that time included back-to-back episodes of Bret Michaels Rock of Love, and The Handmaid's Tale. I can't say why we were doing that to our brains. But I think it bled into the outfit. We started calling him Rock-quaman. That state of mind is also what pushed me into getting a blonde wig, rather than a Momoa toned 'do. I thought...I'm not going Gal Godot on my 'fro, why put Rob in anything but blonde Hair Band locks?

I digress. 

When Rob first got a gander of that gold pleather in full metal jacket form, he asked for a couple of swatches, walked mysteriously off towards the kitchen, and took matters into his own hands.


He returned with several hues of shoe-polished-pleather. I picked one, and yelped HAVE A GOOD TIME GIVING THAT JACKET A RUBDOWN BABE CUZ  THAT'S ALL YOU (we were back to all caps at this point, as Aquaman had well over a dozen embellished costume pieces. I went overboard, pun intended. THE HIP ARMOR ALONE HAS 7 PATTERN PIECES.)

Sorry, didn't mean to go caps lock on that last sentence.

Close Up on Suit Up! Aquaman (or, How I Got Rob in Pleather.) | oonaballoona by marcy harriell

But I mean can you blame me?! THIS IS MY DREAM COME TRUE!!!! ROB IN METALLICS AND PLEATHER AND WITH A FREAKING TRIDENT TO BOOT?! I DO NOT HAVE A LARGE ENOUGH FONT!!!

Out of this series, this was hands down the most fun to make. If Rob wanted stuff like this, welp, I'd be sewing for him alllll the time. As it stands, I'll be making another version of the jacket for him, in as wild a material as he will allow. Sans shoulder gauntlets. 

You can see how I (erm, we!) did it in Ep 2 of Suit Up! on Bluprint. (And if you want to make that jacket, I used Burdastyle's "Men's Pirate Jacket" pattern, with a few mods, natch 😉)

Alrightly then! I gotta go make my rocker birthday boy Coq Au Vin. His birthday week came with the promise of No Deadline Stress Sewing, so I've been cooking. Slightly poorly, if I'm honest. Who knows what'll come out of my machine when I'm back to sewing this weekend...

17 comments:

  1. It's a fabulous costume. Perfection. You two are amazing. LOVE what you do.

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  2. I loved the Wonder Woman costume, but this is INCREDIBLE. Jeans?! Friggin' JEANS?! You're amazing!!!

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    1. teehee thanks Erin! I was pretty stoked about the jeans route.

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  3. OMG. I am speechless. This is AMA-ZING!

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  4. Replies
    1. Hi Lynn!! THANK YOU FOR THE USE OF CAPS!!!!!

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    2. You totally did this!!Aquaman wishes he had this outfit!!
      Kimberly Wilkes

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  5. Holy cow, that is one fantastic badass costume! I LOVE IT!

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  6. This is amazing! At first I had no idea who Aquaman is, so I just enjoyed the gloves and the story if the jacket. (Plus it was dark so I missed the details of the parts) on second visit, goodbess. This is SO well done!!!

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    1. Yeah, the runway walk happens so fast, I'm so glad we have professional stills for documentation! After all the shooting there's little energy left to snap these details on our own ;)

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  7. Amaze-a-balls [but gauntlets are gloves, those are epaulettes or pauldrons lol

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    1. AHH! Thank you for that! I was up to my ears in all manner of hero costume speak, I love getting to know all the right words ;)

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i thankya truly for taking the time to comment, i love a good conversation-- and hope you know my thanks are always implied, if not always written!