Here’s a fun update: The world of spandex is complex. Just a little back history, the Star Trek XI shirt fabric had been identified as “jumbo spandex” by a combination of research and the fan base. In efforts to find a supplier of a seemingly simple fabric, in the last few weeks, I’ve taken the plunge head-first into the world of Spandex creation. This seemingly ubiquitous fabric is amazingly complex and depending on the use has totally different compositions. On top of that, I can’t tell you how many names the same thing is called and how many different compositions are called the same thing !!! Adding another layer to the complication, the Star Trek XI large reference swatches we were given, clearly show a ribbing texture and a sheen on only once side of the piece, thus making the search even more of a challenge. So, this seemingly simple fabric is anything but… simple !
In the past few weeks, I had tried various sources and had just about every spandex house in the nation send me their heaviest gauge spandex, lycra, jumbo spandex, super spandex, jumbo lycra sample out there. I even contacted China mills to produce the exact ratio of dull nylon, bright nylon and spandex to produce the elusive “Jumbo Spandex”. To our disappointment, most of the samples had either one element or some elements of the original piece, but none of them had all elements I was looking for in this quest for the perfect replica. Challenging ? Yes. But in all honesty, this is the part I love most in high quality costume replication. Unfortunately, the clock doesn’t stop ticking and we had a schedule to maintain in getting out our prototypes ready for order.
I quickly had to make an order from a fabric shop to start our prototypes. Its a nice family-owned business. As we were talking, I told them our purpose with the material and maintained a casual supplier/buyer conversation. We then started talking about their history in general and suddenly they started dropping names that became all too familiar, especially one of a good ol’ “Mike” (as in Michael Kaplan). I pressed further and realized I had serendipitously stumbled upon the original source for the fabric used in the ST XI shirts and one more piece of the puzzle solved. As you can imagine, this pretty much made my day and immediately signed them to the “team”. I met with them yesterday and they showed me the “good stuff” in the back and sure enough, it was the exact match for the shirts, with the exact ribbing and asymmetric sheen on one side of the fabric.
If you would grant me one second on a soapbox: This is why we do this and why ANOVOS was started. We love the quest for the perfect replica. In doing so, we are blessed with learning the personal stories of how this all came together. In certain cases, some suppliers had no idea the integral part they played. In fact, one of them just saw ST XI for the first time three days ago (his comments on it were hilarious)! (okay, off the soapbox).
So there you have it folks. You can check this off your list for exactness. If you have a tally so far, we have exact fabric and exact post production. Now on to prototypes ! I hope to have pictures of that process.
