Series Five costume index

A while back over on my Third Doctor Blog I ran a series of features about Jon Pertwee’s costume changes during his run as The Doctor.
I wrote it because I was curious to work out the transition from his first year when he wore the same clothes all season, through to his last where he rarely wore the same thing twice!

Matt  Smith’s costume appeared at the outset to be a fairly fixed affair, but as the series has progressed a number of subtle variants have emerged. What follows is an attempt to document these in one place.

All of the images below have been grabbed from the HD transmissions. Click on them to view in full resolution.

The Eleventh Hour

Jacket Donegal Tweed

NB: There is a minor continuity error in the closing scene, where a close-up shows The Doctor wearing the Harris Tweed jacket (see right) which does not appear for two episodes.

Shirt Burgundy Paul Smith

Trousers Dogtooth design skinny jeans from TopMan
NB. These jeans can be quickly identified by the visible metal waistband button at the top of the fly (see below).

Boots All Saints Layer boots

The Beast Below

Jacket Donegal Tweed

Shirt Burgundy Paul Smith

Trousers Dogtooth design skinny jeans from TopMan

Boots All Saints Layer boots 

Victory Of The Daleks

Jacket Harris Tweed in Mackenzie two-by-two dogtooth weave

Shirt Blue Paul Smith

Trousers Plain charcoal skinny jeans
NB. These jeans can be distinguished from the dogtooth jeans by their clean closure at the waistband with no visible button (see right).

Boots Unidentified brown boots

The Time Of Angels
Flesh & Stone

Jacket Harris Tweed in Mackenzie two-by-two dogtooth weave

Shirt Burgundy Paul Smith
NB. The cuffs have two buttons (so it is not the French Cuff Shirt I featured last month - sorry Ryan), but Matt wears the shirt with only one of these buttons done up (see below, bottom left)

Trousers Dogtooth design skinny jeans from TopMan
NB. These jeans can be quickly identified by the visible metal waistband button at the top of the fly (see above, top left).

Boots All Saints Layer boots

Vampires Of Venice

Jacket Donagal Tweed

Shirt Blue Paul Smith
NB. The matching blue bow tie has an interesting woven knot (see above, top right)

Trousers Dogtooth design skinny jeans from TopMan
NB. Note the visible metal waistband button at the top of the fly (see above, top & bottom left).

Boots All Saints Layer boots

Amy’s Choice

Upper Ledworth scenes

Jacket Donagal Tweed

Shirt Blue Paul Smith
NB. The blue bow tie Matt wears, as well as being narrower than the burgundy one, appears to have a faint woven pattern in it (see above, bottom right). Bow ties are cool!

Trousers Dogtooth design skinny jeans from TopMan
NB. These jeans can be quickly identified by the visible metal waistband button at the top of the fly (see above, top left).

Boots All Saints Layer boots

TARDIS scenes


Jacket Donagal Tweed

Shirt Burgundy Paul Smith

Trousers Dogtooth design skinny jeans from TopMan

Boots All Saints Layer boots

The Hungry Earth & Cold Blood

Jacket Donagal Tweed

Shirt Burgundy Paul Smith

Trousers Dogtooth design skinny jeans from TopMan
NB. These jeans can be quickly identified by the visible metal waistband button at the top of the fly (see above, top left and bottom right).

Boots All Saints Layer boots

Vincent And The Doctor

Jacket Donagal Tweed

Shirt Navy Paul Smith

Trousers Dogtooth design skinny jeans from TopMan

Boots All Saints Layer boots

The Lodger

Jacket Donagal Tweed

Shirt Navy Paul Smith

Trousers Dark grey skinny jeans from Top Man

Boots All Saints Layer boots

NB. This episode has probably the best close-up of The Doctor’s watch (see right).

The Pandorica Opens
& The Big Bang

Jacket Donagal Tweed

Shirt Burgundy Paul Smith

Trousers Dogtooth design skinny jeans from TopMan

Boots All Saints Layer boots

NB. The Doctor is also seen in top hat and tails for the closing wedding scenes (see above, bottom right).

If you spot a variant I have missed, please drop me a line at tennantcoat@me.com so I can amend my information.

River Island Boots - buyers review

This week I helped a friend in the US get a pair of the River Island Double Eyelet Boots, since they do not ship outside the UK.

Here are his views and comments now he has received them.

Thanks to a particularly awesome UK based member here, my pair of River Island double eyelet boots arrived today. If anybody was on the fence about getting a pair of these, I’d say go for it.



The pictures warranted the ridiculously overpriced Tom Baker socks.

Once you get the strangely oversized tongue tucked in place, they’re incredibly comfortable. They’re made with a nicely broken in predistressed leather, so they’re soft from the minute you take them out of the box. I'm not particularly planning on doing an 11 costume, but the boots look so cool I had to get a pair. In my opinion these are way better looking than the All Saints boots, and the sole is rubber with some really nice grips, so no slipping.

I like just about everything about them, except they only look good with tight pants, which contradicts the recent switch I made to never wearing tight pants again, haha. I’ll just have to find a compromise.

River Island Double Eyelet Boots

Although I have a pair of actual All Saints Layer Boot (see right), I am now terrified of wearing them!

Firstly due to their scarcity; and secondly because they have real smooth leather soles, so the potential of falling arse over tit is quite high!

Let it not be said I don’t stand by what I publish – so I thought I might go and seek out a pair of the River Island next-best option that I recommended as an Alternative.

It was one of my clients, Peter Lack, who first drew them to everyone’s attention, so a big thanks to him for sharing his find with us all.

I was going up to central London today anyways, so I took a little trip down Oxford Street to see what I could find. This is the most perfect place to buy shoes, as this is the street cited in The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy in the short film about the Shoe Event Horizon . . . .

I found the flagship River Island store (see above) and went to the footwear department. I was surprised to see that there are a number of similar boots on offer.

I have listed their individual product codes here, as their website is flash-based so I am unable to provide direct links to the shoes concerned.

Its worth looking at the Military Lace Up Boot (code 245950); the Leather Military Boot (code 242717); the Military Zip Boot (code 246409).

But two caught my eye: the Distressed Military Boot (code 242172) (see below, right) and the Double Eyelet Boot (code 243710) (see below, left), which I recommended previously.

I ask for them in a size 10 and after a bit of scrabbling around (one of them was part of the display) they found a matching pair!

I tried them on (see above – out with Ten, in with Eleven!) and they were a good, comfortable fit. They also have a rubber sole, so less likely to be slippery on wet or shiny surfaces.

You might be able to see from this picture that on the inside of the boots there is a zip. This allows you to put the boots on easily and is not entirely a bad thing!

There was a minor bit of customer perusal damage to the one that had been in display, but nothing too major. Since they were the only pair in the sore in my size, I negotiated a 10% discount and left happy.

When I left the store I noticed that right next door was a branch of New Look (see below).

I had read on the forums that someone had spotted a pair of shoes in New Look that were a contender to be a next-best to the All Saints boots.
I thought I would take a look.

After going up two floors I eventually found their men’s shoes department and amongst all the All Star wannabe slippers, and cheap formal TopMan knock-off shoes I found what I think they were referring to (see below).

It comes in a brown or a black, and is of soft, pre-worn leather with a similar look to the All Saints boots, but it ends there.
They lack the layered ankle, which i what makes the All Saints boots SO distinctive.

It was as I was leaving I suddenly realised I recognised the escalators in the store. Funny thing to say, but they are buy one of the side walls and you have to walk a long way to get to the next one going down.

This store used to be a branch of Boarders, before it folded in the credit crunch.
It was in the good times that I went there to meet John Barrowman, and later the cast of Sarah Jane Adventures (see right).

I had also read in the Eleven Costume Breakdown that some boots in Aldo were also a possibility, so I headed down Oxford Street to find their store too (see below).

I found their men’s boots (see below), but again they lacked the design nuances of screen-used boots.

So far for me, when it comes down to it, I think the Double Eyelet Boots from River Island (see below) are the top of the next-best options.

So much so I bought I a pair myself!

UPDATE

I have now owned and worn my River Island boots for a good week now, and I can report how much I like them.

Below are some comparison pictures between the All Saints Layer Boots (always on the left) and the River Island Double Eyelet Boots (always on the right) so you can see how they compare.

They were a perfect fit from day one, and have never rubbed or given me blisters the way some new boots or shoes can!

They are very comfortable and hardly feel like I am wearing them, which is the way a good fitting pair of shoes should be. They have a rubber sole, compared to the leather one of the All Saints boots, and this gives them better grip.

My only criticism of them – and there were warning signals before I bought them – is the inside of the zip, which has a flap of fabric to (I presume) soften the feel of the zip on your foot.

On the display pair (which I bought as they were the only pair in stock in my size) the flap had become trapped in the zip and had shredded. I bartered a 10% discount because of it and snipped it off when I got them home.

Within a day or so the other boot had the same problem, and the zip got totally snagged and it took half-an-hour to free it!

I then cut this flap off too and would recommend cutting them away before wearing them if you want to avoid the same problem.

All that is minor really, compared to the fit and comfort as well as the similarity to the All Saint boots.

All Saints Boots - the alternatives

Since starting this blog, I have been contacted by a number of people seeking to begin or complete their Eleven outfits.

As I have outlined, many of the items making up the costume are off the peg and at the time of filming were relatively easy to obtain.
But that’s only if you were looking at the right moment, which has annoying passed most of us by.

One of these was the All Saints Boots, which apparently were a personal choice by Matt Smith himself. Now discontinued (I only got mine by the skin of my teeth), they are however, part of the trends and fashions that were seen in the 2009/2010 season, and were not as a concept exclusive to All Saints.

These hob-nail style boots, with pre-worn leather and waxed laces have been included in the collections of some other high street retailers, though to varying designs.

Below are some of the boots found by other cosplayers, which may prove to be more readily available and form a reasonable next-best option if you didn’t manage to grab the All Saints boots at the time.

Boulden Boots found on AldoShoes.com

These boots are reasonably priced and at present available in both the UK and the US. They come in a choice of Black (see above) or Dark Brown (see below).

Roam Boots by All Saints

Amusingly the next choice of an alternative is from All Saints themselves, and is their Roam Boots. These have the rough and pre-worn look of the Layer Boot, but are much more chunky and rugged.

Still, it’s nice to at least wear the same label as The Doctor!

Double Eyelet Boot by River Island

Finally, and in my view the best match, are the Double Eyelet Boots produced by River Island.

They are the only boot I have seen with the tiered rows of eyelets, so integral to the All Saints originals. After all, they were called Layer Boots for a reason!

NB: the River Island website is flash-based, so I cannot give a direct link to the boots.
If you go to RiverIsland.com and search for product code 243710, you should find them okay.

If you come across another strikingly similar boot that could be an alternative to the All Saints Layer Boots, drop me a line and I’ll add them to the page.
Email me at tennantcoat@me.com.

Boots - All Saints

As well as covering the modifications I am doing to my original Paul Smith PS shirt, I also thought I’d share some of my experiences gathering the other off-the-shelf items I managed to grab before they too sold out.

An early read-herring was contained in a BBC News online story called The fashion police on Doctor Who's new outfit. In it the boots worn were incorrectly identified as being Prada. The comment that they had “just arrived in the stores” made them feel very accessible, so it wasn’t long before I was doing searches to see if I could find them. I did see something on their website which was similar, but just not quite the same, with a hefty price-tag attached. Just as well I didn’t snap them up, as it took the work of a member of the online forums to spot they were actually from All Saints, a chain of stores in the UK, and not Prada after all.

The first photo published of the boots (see right) clearly showed an accurate match, right down to the subtlety of the contrasting coloured leather at the ankle, something I had not noticed in the official image.

Further postings in the thread quickly showed that far from being “just arrived in stores”, they we actually already last-season and were only available as remaindered items in All Saints autumn sale.
Urghhh!

On the upside, they were reduced from their £110 price tag to £77 (see below). All I had to do was find a pair . . .

Now, All Saints have stores across the UK, but they are spread quite thin, though there are three stores in London alone.

As an aside, I was aware of their stores for a while, as several I had seen sported striking window displays with literally dozens of Singer and other antique sewing machines arranged on shelves in a grid format.
I scoured the Westfield display (see left), one of the largest such in the UK, but sadly could not see the model I own.

I started with these to see if I could track down a pair, but found they were already out of stock. One branch did show a pair on their computer system, but when they checked they could not be found. This is apparently common when supplies run down to their last pairs as it is only when one or two are left that discrepancies in stock-taking become clear.

Some further phone calls to other branches found one or two pairs in Birmingham and Glasgow, but none in sizes that would fit me.

Then I called the Bristol branch (see right) and discovered that they not only had them in stock, they had two pairs in-hand, one in my size and one in the size up from that.

I asked if they could be transfered to a London store for me to collect, but was informed that since they were stock in their autumn sale it would not be possible (they only do that as a service on full price items, besides their stock control tends to go to pot during sales times apparently!).
A telephone appeal to the customer service department of All Saints head office fell on deaf ears.

I called the Bristol store back and spoke to the manager, who was doing his best to be helpful, but his hands were tied to some extent.
I asked if I could pay by credit card over the phone and have them shipped – but that was a non-starter as they are not legally authorized or trained to take payment in that way without the card holder being present.
It was looking like the only way I would secure them would be if I traveled down to the store and collected in person, so I asked if they could be put to one side for me to pick up the next day.
This too was not an option as if he had a walk-in buyer that afternoon he would have to sell them to that customer.

The first olive branch I did get was an offer that if I called back at 5pm, and no-one had bought them til that point, I could have them put to one side, so long as I was at the store on its opening the next morning.
I waited a few tense hours – watching the forum thread in case anyone else had got wind of them (sorry guys, love and war and all that) – but luckily no-one had.
I called back at 5pm as agreed and sure enough both pairs remained unsold. I was very happy :)

So the next morning, bright and early, we set out to do the two-hour 130 mile trip to Bristol. We got there a few minutes before the store opened, and with a suitable anti-climax, found the manager and the boots put to one side for me. I paid for them as was back on the road within minutes of getting there!

I had decided to buy both pairs, just to make sure I got a pair to fit, with the intention of selling of the lesser pair to recoup our petrol costs, which I successfully did a few weeks later.

From what I gather, there were few other pairs around and I was lucky to grab what I did.
For that I am grateful to the Manager of the Bristol branch of All Saints!

The Beginning Of Time

Today seemed like the best day to start this new blog – the first day we all saw Matt Smith in Doctor Who for the very first time.

I should quickly point out that this is actually a blog I had no intention of starting or writing! I didn’t feel there was much to contribute to the Eleventh Doctor Costume front, but a series of happenstance came together like a celestial alignment and for me the number of pieces that fell into place made what I am about to do become inevitable!

Blimey, that sounds ominous!

Anyway, as soon as the first image of Matt Smith in costume was revealed in BBC Breakfast on 20th July 2009 (see right), I quickly realized it was a costume that took very little to replicate. With it principally being made up of off-the-peg clothing, there were few bespoke, custom-made items to create.

However, no sooner had it appeared, then the chase was afoot to find exactly what those items actually were.
The online costuming forums, when they work, work well! So it wasn’t long before the key items of the costume were identified.

The boots – All Saints

The Shirt – Paul Smith PS

The Trousers – TopMan

All of these items had been gleaned from the then current collections for those retailers, and it quickly became apparent that their time was rapidly passing and they were quickly becoming end-of-line items and hard to track down.

I’ll cover my obtaining of the boots and trousers in a future entry, but for now its the shirt that interests me.

The shirt was part of the Summer 09 Paul Smith PS collection (see left), and I managed to grab mine through a online site called John Anthony.
I usually take a L in shirts, so ordered that, only to get a phone call telling me they had sold out. They did, however, have the XL, so I switched to that instead.
Just as well, cos when it arrived it was a snug fit!

Once various people started getting their hands on the shirts, they soon spotted three minor subtle differences.

Breast pocket – The Paul Smith shirt has a breast pocket, which is not present on the Matt Smith shirt.

Cuffs – The Matt Smith shirt has a couple of bold burgundy stripes around the cuffs, which are not on the Paul Smith shirt.

Button stand – The Paul Smith shirt has a flap, concealing the buttons from view when it is worn, but on the Matt Smith shirt they are clearly visible.

My opinion is that these modifications were made to differentiate the Matt Smith shirt from the Paul Smith original.

Well, now the Sonic Screwdriver has been handed over to Matt Smith, the Paul Smith shirts are impossible to find and are becoming as rare as hen’s teeth.

What I need to do now is perform the same modifications to my shirt, in the same way the costume department did to theirs.

Check back soon to see how I get on . . .