Earlier this year, our friend Dan, better known to the Dragon*Con crowd as steam punk professor X, asked if Dalek Braun could be the flower girl in his wedding. Obviously I said yes, but I needed to figure out what to wear myself to the wedding. When I started building Braun, I originally intended to dress up as the 9th doctor as he’s my favorite, but I found the coat didn’t look right when I am holding a controller. Additionally I didn’t really want to do 10 or 11 because so many people have done them before and I like to be unique. After some research I found the 11th doctor was going to wear a new outfit with a purple frock coat in the second half of season 7. Since the frock coat fit well with the Victorian theme of the wedding I decided to go with that outfit.
Now I’m going to put a disclaimer here that I originally had no intention to make a write up about this costume as it’s not a prop and simply made from a pattern and found materials. Therefore, pictures are very limited. However, after wearing it to several cons, I’ve received a lot of questions from people about the fabric, shoes, and pattern, so I am putting this out to help anyone looking to make this particular doctor outfit.
First, the jacket. I started off by going to the local Jo Ann and flipping through their pattern catalogs. Eventually I found Simplicity pattern 2895, which has patterns for the frock coat and other western costume pieces. The coat is made per pattern, the only modification I made was leaving the buttons off.
Finding the fabric was a little harder. From the images I had at the time the coat appears to be made of a plum wool fabric with a distinctive weave. The fabric I went with was listed as “Wool Suiting Burgundy/Grey, UP-460” from fabric.com. Unfortunately, they no longer appear to carry it. The liner is purple suit liner and the collar is purple velvet, both from Jo-Ann.
Close up of the fabric while attaching the sleeve
The Liner
Coat before seams sewn shut
At one point I attempted to make my own grey vest for the costume. For this I used Simplicity pattern 7030 and fabric from Jo Ann. The result was okay but I did not like how the back came out and didn’t know how to tailor it. Instead, I wear a 517 Grey wool men’s vest from here.
Original vest I made
I could not find a brown bow tie I liked, so I ended up making my own. Using brown fabric I made a clip on bow tie using the pattern that came with the vest
Shirt and pants were found items from Sears. The shirt is a Covington Fitted blue stripped dress shirt and the pants are Levis 514 jeans.
Finally, my boots were purchased from Amazon here . They are listed as Men’s Black Polar Fox boots. At the time I purchased them I had no good references of the Doctor’s feet. Today I am fairly certain they are suppose to be brown
I really enjoy this costume. I think it goes well with the Dalek and is a nice costume to wear for walking around or going to the dealer’s room where our usual bulky costumes won’t fit. Occasionally for Doctor Who themed parties I will throw on my grey mau5 head with this costume. I’ve received several compliments on how the head matches the costume (I guess the grays go together?) but the head was made for David’s bachelor party and I usually wear it because it is the most accurate and comfortable mau5 head I have made. There will be a How2 for fabric heads sometime in the near future which includes the changes since our first fabric mau5.
Now that we have this write up out of the way, time to start the long blog entry for Jim Lovell’s moon suit!
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