How to make a Jon Snow costume without breaking the bank
When Sebastian asked me to make an authentic Jon Snow outfit for him complete with a Long Claw sword I had no idea what I was letting myself in for. In fact the whole process turned into quite the project... it challenged me on numerous levels and took me many evenings to complete. I was left with numb fingers from hand sewing the leather binding for hours on end and a sewing machine that gave up the ghost halfway through quilting the fabric. I also lost count of the number of hours that I poured over various photographs of Jon Snow himself – searching for those extra details which makes all the difference when creating something special.
However, lets forget all that pain and go right back to the very beginning. We did of course have considerations... which begun with how much the materials were going to cost. For starters, those of you who have watched the Game of Thrones televisual feast, will be able to say how much leather Jon Snow wore, collectively on this side, and on and over the Wall. It was a lot. And leather costs money, not to mention that the fur on his cloak didn't come from off the roll at a fiver a pop. I felt I had to be honest with Sebastian at the beginning of the project.
The cost
It was going to cost a great deal. And the trouble is, when you accept that things are going to get expensive, all subsequent (and potentially pricey) purchases are accepted with a kind of easy grace – which I warned Sebastian against. “This costume could turn into a money pit if you don't watch out,” I warned him, and he duly rethought his expectations on what kind of outfit he would be wearing later that year.
The fact of the matter is, before starting a project of this kind, it is really important to give yourself a limit to how much you are going to spend. This can have two positive outcomes. The first is that you cut down on the amount of useless (let's see if this works) junk which may or may not work for the costume, and secondly, it does kind of encourage you to take advantage of cheaper materials and enhance your ability to make do with, and adapt what you already have in your rag bag.
We looked at the 'off the peg' Jon Snow costumes currently being sold on various sites on the internet and realised that the sort of costume that Sebastian wanted simply couldn't be purchased anywhere. Even a generic representation was selling for at least £200 and so we were forced to accept that the material needed for our efforts was going to cost at least £100 altogether. With this budgetary figure in mind, Sebastian was immediately dissuaded from buying a length of leather material to make the jerkin because it would have promptly swallowed up a good proportion of his money. Instead, he scoured his wardrobe and came up with a leather coat he had previously used for a Star Trek Khan costume.
He felt it was worth the sacrifice for the effect that he wanted to create. Although I was unsure about how it would look, I duly spend the whole of one evening dissecting the thing right down to its bare front back and sides and was subsequently impressed with how well it could work. How easily I can be sucked into things...
