Fourty Nine Shades of Black, One of Blue

This is going to be a shorter post than usual as it was written rather quickly but here I'll be discussing the black overdyed trousers again as well as the blue John Lewis cufflinks.

Black:

My previous post discussed the dye treatment done to my Paul Smith trousers in order to modify them to be suitable for the S10 black overdyed trousers. Well this post is going to discuss colour, as many of you might know it's a tricky thing to pin down. Sometimes between dye batches there are noticeable differences, much like different production batches of nearly everything. In addition, inevitable washing and exposure to sunlight will fade the fabric to a degree as I'm sure anyone with an old pair of black jeans will know. All of this is assuming you have the fabric in hand, through a camera lens with various filters and lightnings it can be extremely difficult to pin down a specific shade. Essentially, what I'm getting at is that colour is a tricky thing to pin down.

Well by sheer dumb luck I managed to very recently get hold of a pair of Paul Smith stretch cotton twill trousers in my size with completely unaltered leg length that were made in black out of the factory, unworn and with no overdye needed. What's interesting is that despite being newer and black out of the box, they don't seem as accurate as the overdyed ones. As I said, colour is tricky to pin down. My camera isn't really good enough to accurately show what I mean hence the lack of pictures but I'll try my best to explain.

If you've ever tried to put a black three piece suit together out of mismatched items you'll know it doesn't work, different fabrics are different shades of black and some will look darker or lighter than the others. The trousers I dyed both ended up a fairly comparable shade to the Palmer waistcoat, perhaps a little lighter, but were both definitely a sufficiently dark shade to be categorically called black. The trousers that came out of the factory black however are a noticeably deeper black than my overdyed trousers or the TM Lewin waistcoat.

If you look at the pictures in my previous post you might notice that the screen worn S10 overdyed trousers appear to be a lighter shade of black than basically all of the other black clothes in the picture, though are definitely overdyed to be black as stated by Hayley Nebauer on Twitter. The reason for this is that the trousers are 97% cotton and 3% elastane, the cotton takes the dye readily however the elastane will not do so using conventional dye methods due to its synthetic nature. Despite only being a small percentage of the overall blend it is enough to prevent the trousers reaching the deepest shades of black. The reason the trousers that left the factory as black are deeper is due to the more effective industrial dye processes employed during production. Despite one of the two pairs of my overdyed trousers starting as a rather dark colour (both the cotton and elastane content) additional hand dyeing is not capable of making it colour match the ones that started out as black.

So now I've got three pairs of black Paul Smith trousers, one is a deep production black colour and the other two are a slightly lighter black as a result of the overdyeing. The lighter overdyed black appears to be be a more accurate shade however the newer production black ones have longer legs more suited to my height. As a result of this I will probably auction off my size 32 overdyed trousers and keep the factory black ones, if I use them regularly day to day they'll fade to a more accurate shade in time. So if anyone is after a pair of black overdyed size 32 trousers they'll probably be made available via auction in the near future.

Blue:

As many of you know I managed to obtain a very limited number of the blue enamel John Lewis cufflinks. I had three spare initially, one was put aside for a friend and two were made available for trade offers. The friend passed on them and I received a fair screen accurate trade offer for one of the sets so that brings the number of spare unreserved pairs I have back to two.

A set of the beautiful enamel John Lewis cufflinks.

I would've preferred to trade each set for something discontinued of similar original retail value, such as the Label Lab tees, I received very many offers (both trade and cash) for the cufflinks however I ultimately only ended up accepting that one trade offer. So this leaves me in a bit of a pickle, how to fairly divide such a limited supply amongst such high demand? Well to be honest I'm amazed I even got one pair, let alone multiple, given that I found them in a John Lewis shop quite some time after their identity was revealed to the community. So I decided to use my astoundingly good luck to do a little good and have come to this decision:

One set of the remaining cufflinks will go to auction through eBay with half the money going to Cancer Research UK. This way I'll at least cover my costs and maybe make a small profit, someone will get a set of screen accurate cufflinks and a small amount of good might be done as a result. A link to the auction can be found within the sales page. The final set I will hold onto until I've decided what to do with them.

Wouldn't You Just Dye Without Paul Smith?

Over the course of Series 10 the Doctor seems to have acquired three known new pairs of trousers, all of them black rather than the various dark navy ones seen in the last two series. In order of appearance these are:

• Chris Kerr forward pleated trousers made from Harrisons super 150 wool
• Unknown Victorian style trousers
• Paul Smith flat fronted stretch cotton trousers (originally blue but overdyed black)

The black overdyed Paul Smith trousers as part of the 'all-black' variant.

Of these three the only off-the-shelf ones are the Paul Smiths, from their appearance they more than likely started life as the dark navy stretch cotton trousers that first appeared towards the end of Series 9. They are sometimes called 'chino-style' however this is a slightly misleading name as they are really formal trousers that just happen to be made of cotton.

Series 10 promo picture featuring what I believe to be the black trousers.

Both the navy and black versions have returned for Series 10, with the black ones being worn as part of multiple different costumes. Given that these SA trousers have sold out and the bottle required to attempt to overdye such expensive trousers I decided to look for alternatives.

Only the coat is navy, everything else is black.

The closest alt pair I could find on the high street weren't bad but had accuracy issues with all four pockets and the fabric was fuzzier and thinner than the Paul Smith stuff. I therefore decided instead to try and find a second-hand pair of Paul Smith trousers and dye them myself.

I'd be happy too if I were wearing such an awesome outfit.

Initially I found a lovely pair of dark navy cotton trousers by Paul Smith, from the inner lining strip near the zipper I could tell that they weren't the Screen Accurate ones however they were externally completely identical in terms of fabric and design features so could be classed as a Screen Accurate Variant (SA-V). After they arrived however I began to realise the leg was slightly too short for me, being fairly tall I decided these trousers would be better suited to someone slightly shorter who could appreciate them more as a nearly perfect pair of navy trousers. I reluctantly put these trousers to one side and continued my search.

The SA-V trousers directly compared to the SA ones.

Some time later I managed to find two more pairs of SA-V stretch cotton trousers, one a washed out black, the other a dark grey. The faded black one was a size 32 as well, making it a more suitable size for me than the dark navy ones (size 34) I originally got ahold of. The legs had been shortened so I decided to get both, that way given the fabric for both would be identical after dyeing I could cannibalise the second to add cuffs if there was not enough excess leg length on the first.

The two new pairs of trousers fated to be overdyed black.

As soon as they arrived I opened up the base of the leg to release as much fabric from the inside as possible, both had been amateurishly shortened using iron-on tape. Fortunately after pinning I decided there'd be enough surplus leg length to add cuffs without sacrificing the second pair. After removing as much of the adhesive as possible and nearly completely ironing out the crease where the leg originally ended I made up a dye bath and dropped them both in to stew.

A brief pause to take a picture between the hour of constant stirring to ensure an even dye.

The end result was exactly what I'd hoped for, the dye penetrated the fabric well due to the high cotton content and both trousers ended up black. However, due to the size 34 trousers starting off as a lighter colour the black on them was very slightly more of a faded shade, still definitely black but not quite perfect. I considered simply saying "that'll do" and calling it a day but given that I knew at this point I'd end up selling these trousers I decided to do it properly and give them a second dye bath to fully saturate the fabric. This was a bit tedious and added some additional cost but I'm happy to say it was worth it as the fabric ended up a deeper shade of black afterwards. The only real difference between my overdyed black trousers and the actual ones is that the SA pair is a marginally slimmer cut, though this of course can be a bit subjective depending on the wearer's leg proportions.

The end result against a white background to show the new black colour.

Overall I'm exceedingly happy with how these turned out, I was definitely not going to overdye my actual S9-S10 navy ones so this was the next best thing to 'ruining' an already fully Screen Accurate pair. Strangely enough the SA trousers also came in black so Hayley's overdyeing of the pre-existing navy ones wasn't strictly speaking necessarily. They were probably older, slightly worn pairs that she decided to breathe some new life into, like the characterful distressing done to the older Budd shirts.

Everything cotton soaked up the dye, including the pocket fabric.

As a result of this quest for accuracy however I have ended up with two additional pairs of SA-V Paul Smith trousers, if anyone's been hunting for their very own pair (or pairs) to add to their collection check out my blog's Sale's Page.