New York Denim
Introduction – How This Started
When I first saw KISS live in 1988, Paul Stanley was wearing a denim jacket that I instantly fell in love with.
Of course, I waited for the moment when he would take it off and throw it into the audience — but unfortunately… he seemed very happy with it himself.
Ever since then, I always had the idea of recreating that jacket myself. But I never actually did it.
Until a friend of mine stayed with me for a few weeks. We were talking about KISS memorabilia and the jacket came up.
He said, “I once had a girlfriend who owned the L.A. version.”
That’s when I realized those jackets were actually sold in the 1980s. And sure enough… I found one on eBay and bought it immediately.
Then came the harder part: collecting all the patches and pins. Of course, they were all from the 1980s and almost impossible to find.
In the end I couldn’t locate everything, and some items I had to settle for in a slightly smaller version.
But I’m still very happy with the result.
Paul Stanley in Tilburg 1988
The jacket as I bought it from Ebay. Unfortunately ’the Big Apple’ was not on the pocket but above that.
So I bought a cheap denim jacket and cut out a piece to replace the shoulder part.
Some of the items ready to be attached to the jacket.
Here I painted the apple on the pocket and sewed on a Broadway patch, which was a hard find. I ended up finding a jacket in Japan with all kinds op patches. So I bought it, took of the Broadway one and threw away the jacket…
Since New York was only written on the left sleeve I had to put it myself on the right sleeve.
It was only then when I noticed the black paint surrounding the text is a lot smaller on Paul Stanley’s jacket then on mine. So not all jackets are alike.
Adding rhinestones.
And here it is. The finished product. Not exactly the same, but pretty close.
I added some stars on the back. I saw Paul had them too.