My Dirty L'il Secret

[442RCT]

I admitted that ten years ago, I would have bid on a really bad repro jacket currently for sale on e-Bay...one of the members replied...

Hot damn! I sure do like those lil' ol' Eighth AF collar tips! Funnily enough I was in a surplus store yesterday, saw a set of A-2 box-stitched epaulettes on a jacket on a rack, and got quite excited for a second-until I saw the map on the liner. Mind you, I remember being in a shop in Covent Garden many years ago, and seeing a whole rack of Avirex's, and thinking how cool they were. Little did I know!

Well, I have to 'out' myself... this is the first A-2ish jacket I bought in 1992, and I still wear this jacket. I had the jacket 'custom' painted for me by a friend of a friend about a month after buying it. It is a Korean made Cooper, marked size 38, but it's a very generous 38-42. It was pre-distressed leather...and it suprisingly it still looks the same as when I bought it...no big feat since it's supposed to be distressed, no rips, no tears and the cuffs and waistband have no holes, zipper zips, snaps snap, etc.. I got the jacket at a local shop going out of business sale for $60 and happen to be talking to a friend about it. It had a funky silk screened scene on the back...best I can recollect, it was a WWI looking pilot standing in front of the nose of a parked nondescript taildragging airplane. My friend said he had a friend who was an artist and would paint over the back for me. The guy who painted the jacket just painted a pin-up girl over the original scene. The girl was off the cover of a 1991 Playboy magazine. The artist was so proud of his work, he asked to display the jacket for a month at his local library for a tribute to veterans. Later I painted the AAF star and the Chinese star, added the pilot wings, then painted over the unremarkable patch on the front of the jacket, morphing it into the AVG 3rd Pursuit. I don't know what kind of paint the artist used, I'm guessing because of painting over the original silkscreen paint and the surface of 'distressed' leather, the paint job cracked and crazed, which I don't really mind...it gives it the patina to go along with the leather.
After getting this jacket, the same friend lent me his copy of "Cowboys Of the Sky" and I started buying Avirex's, and probably will continue if they're cheap enough, the ironic thing is 'vintage' Avirex jackets have become collectible in their own right...go figure. :?:
So there's my dirty little secret ...and I'll understand if none wants to ever talk to me again... :cry:
Oh yeah, in case anyone is interested, I have an extra set of those collar tips for sale.

 

[MikeyB-17]

Hell, why not? Up here in the rarified atmosphere of 'proper' jacket collecting, it's easy to look down on jackets like this, but it's yours, it has history for you, and you enjoy it. We're pretty disparaging about Avirex's and the like, and in terms of authenticity they don't come anywhere near the likes of GW, RM etc., but the vast majority of normal sensible folk wouldn't know an Avirex from a donkey jacket, and neither would they care. Actually, Avirex are capable of making quite respectable repros-their early A-2's before they started adding handwarmer pockets etc. were pretty good, and I've seen pics of their 'museum' (?) B-3's which weren't at all bad. And at least Cooper were an actual WWII military contractor.
Enjoy your jacket, and never mind the likes of us! I'll pass on the collar tips, though.