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Long but fun story ( I hope):
To start off, the tights and tunic are actually screen used from the 1996 movie so the compliments really need to go to the original costumers for their efforts on those.  I live near the Los Angeles area. Paramount shut down one of their costume warehouses to make for more business offices (Ughhh!) and sold off a CHUNK of their wardrobe to a local used clothing store known as "It's a Wrap." They specialize in selling wardrobe from TV and Film. They knew they acquired a ton of Star Trek stuff from the Paramount acquisition and held a special auction for that. But the Phantom ended up in my hands from one of their Halloween sales. I don't think they had any idea what they were. I saw the purple and the skull on the chest and it all registered to me. The initials on the tunic and tights were for the stunt man while a friend of mine ended up with a pair of Zane's tunic and tights that had the cut in the side for the stab wound in the opening action sequence and Zane's initials.

My friend also knew one of the seamstresses for the 1996 film and asked her how many outfits were made. She said that since it was a fragile material, they had made a lot of them.

So I needed the cowl, trunks, boots, rings and belt rig to complete the suit.

In researching the pattern to paint my cowl (which took two full days of just masking it off) I came across artist, Tim Kummerow who painted the original costume for the film. He told me that they supplied him with a mannequin covered with a blank costume. He started with the reference design by the Henson studios and worked on the costume and cowl directly for two months. After the art was finished, they removed the seams of the costume, scanned it and silk screened it as a pattern to the fabric for many costumes. The seamstresses simply cut the pattern directly off the fabric and sewed. The cowl he painted was neoprene, but the ones used for the film were seamless rubber type pieces. Since I couldn't get a casting of my head any time soon, my wife Vickie hand stitched a neoprene one and I did the art to it. For the trunks, I had to dye the material from white to the right shade of purple. I had to hand draw the tattoo art pattern for the trunks. Thank goodness for audio books while you do that for over six hours straight.

I think my favorite piece to have worked on personally was making the gun belt. I started with a Reelart buckle that I found online but didn't like the skull shape so I resurfaced the skull with some Magic-sculpt clay and then re-casted it. I added nickel/silver powder to the clear resin mixture to give a more metallic look but the nickel made it go too brown so I hit it with the airbrush with some silver leafing liquid. I bought a hide of leather, cut it, dyed it, oiled it up and took it to a Shoe repair shop for the stitching as need. I've very happy with how that turned out since I never made a gun belt in my life.
Someday, I may tackle the classic comic strip version of the costume as well but for now this will do.

I hope you enjoy.


What's this doing in my jungle?