Recent content by Joe Land

Thank you for the photos. You have a mighty fine collection. And the Northrup jacket . . . that one is special. I had forgotten the white fleece lining until just this moment. For goodness sakes! I do remember those. I remember the feel of that fabric. I really appreciate you showing me that!!

After starting Land Manufacturing in the mid 50's my dad continued working as a tailor and kept the day job while mom and three ladies they hired sewed flight suits in the basement of the house. Dad used to tell me how he spent his coffee breaks at the day job. He said while the other tailors...

I was maybe ten years old, not sure but I remember a store front in Boulder where we went. It had been converted to a sewing shop and we were there after hours. We had driven all the way to Boulder in a Plymouth station wagon loaded with coats and Gerry showed my dad how to fill the shells...

There is one on ebay and I hope you all leave it there. I'm saving up waiting for an opportunity to buy it. Unreal how collectible my dad's products have become.

Here's a photo of me when I was about 15 years old sitting on the couch in Dad's office at Land Mfg. I have on a winter flight coat dad made on a contract for the FAA. It was a 3/4 length coat with a real mouton collar. I remember a trip with dad to Boulder Colorado to meet with Gerry, the...

Many are the times I kept my dad company watching him cuff a pair of pants or shorten the sleeves on a suit and he liked to talk about the old master tailors who taught him. They were mostly Germans who survived the concentration camps. They had the tattoos. But there were other immigrant...

Now that I think of it, I know dad did all the cutting by hand at night for the early flight suit contracts so he probably cut out thousands of orange or sage green K2B's with those shears. He built a 16' cutting table out of 2x4's and plywood and covered it with masonite. I can remember...

I still have the only capital my dad had when he started Land Manufacturing in our basement. The tools of a tailor. The tape measure is new but everything else is older than I am. And I can guarantee you a whole lot of flying suits and jackets were cut out with those shears.

I sure watched his handwork for endless hours really my whole life but he never taught me in that sense. He used to lament that high end tailoring would die out because it didn’t pay enough. But I can sew on a coat button with a shank like Ive seen him do a hundred times and hem a pair of...

maverikson asked about the hand worked button holes here's a photo. and my dad's silver tailor's thimble.

Here's a photo of my dad, E.H. Land, around the time he was working for both Henry Levitt as a tailor and running the production line for Henry's friends, Louie and Freddie Fruhauf at their band uniform company in Wichita. The Fruhaufs briefly manufactured flight jackets but dropped that to...

It might interest you all that the orange lining in the flight jackets was my father's idea. Flight jackets in the early 50's and before were mostly lined in sage green or other OD but not the orange. Dad maintained his whole life that the orange lining was his idea first. He convinced the...

I don’t have the definitive answer to your question but the likely explanation would be to avoid any material that would generate static electricity in a pure oxygen environment.

I'm glad to share and answer questions as best I can and I'll dig around for some photos. The Purple Heart with Gold Star over my shoulder in my room is my brother's, David A. Land, USNR KIA 1/14/69.

Thank you! I can’t begin to tell you how gratifying it is to discover the appreciation for my dad’s work. It was so long ago. I’m 66 and I was a just a little boy when mom and dad accomplished all that. I remember playing in the factory among the piles of flight suits, the roar of room full of...