The Tuxedo Jacket Story
Why Do We Have Leather Jackets?
Once upon a time, Christi (aka Violet) took fashion design classes at the Fashion Institute of Technology. At the time, she was working at Bloomberg Systems in NYC and FIT was in between work & the train to Long Island. She took fashion illustration, draping, and pattern making - it was just for fun.
Fast forward to 2006 when Christi and Tom got married. They held a biker themed wedding. It was actually a DOUBLE biker wedding with Tom’s friend, Al who he had grown up with in Scituate, MA. The audience was super confused - some had received invitations to one wedding and the others had received invitations to the other. Quite fun.
Anyway, Christi made Tom a leather tuxedo to wear during the wedding. She also designed and made her own wedding outfit. The activity of doing that, sparked a memory that she wanted to design a clothing line. So she used the theme to make her fashion designer dream come true. She would design and make a line of leather clothing for bikers who wanted some dress-up clothes!
The prototypes came out amazingly well, so she placed an order for more - with the idea that she’d sell them at biker events and Art In Motion LLC would use their “Tuk Tuk Trike” to escort the bride and groom at weddings.
Alphachix brand leather jacket with tails
Christi designed a woman’s version with zip off tails. It was featured in Curve Magazine in 2009. This was one of the photos sent to Curve and it’s of one of the first prototype vests for women.
The White Version
We had one white tuxedo made with fixed tails for Tom’s fancy moments. Here’s a photo of Tom and Christi a few years ago.
The Men’s Line
The first sign of trouble showed up in the first order of tuxedos after the prototype. The tuxedos arrived at Art In Motion and the tails were missing - they were jackets alone.
And not only that, the zippers of the jackets were made to zip the way a woman’s coat was sewn, not the way a man’s
These jackets are hanging on the rack outside and we’lll happily sell one to you!
The final frustration was when the order of the correct tuxedos was sent, the box opened up in customs in Pennsylvania and they never arrived in Kissimmee. The vendor agreed to replace the jackets, and when they were arrived, they were just as designed. These tuxedos are hanging on the rack outside.
So… why are they still hanging there? Well… remember the box that opened up in customs? Apparently customs scooped the tuxedos up, put them on a pallet and sold them to a reseller. The reseller started selling them on eBay for less than they cost to make them. Someone somewhere has bought some AlphaBoyz tuxedos, but they didn’t buy them from Art In Motion LLC. So we put the tuxedos in boxes and stored them at our old building for 15 years.
We just took them out, and put them at Violet’s Garage where we’re deciding whether or not to put them into production or not. Please let us know if you think we should resurrect this dream?!?!