The Vest consists of :
The 4 main panels of the vest are made with 6.5mm Heathcoat Fabrics "spacer material" (IT looks like athletic mesh on the outside, but inside is a thick space-age latticework of fibers that thicken the material). The Collar ring is made of various leather materials, padded with shaped foam. The edging on the hero and the secondary cloth vests were done with black Suede Trim.
Armor Plates - The 12 armored plates used on the hero Dredd and Anderson armor was made from .060 and .093 ABS 'pinseal' plastic. The background and stunt armor is made from urethane rubber (which molds were made from the original vacformed parts.) Both types of armor were stitched down to the vest. Nothing was riveted to the vest. Possibly you will need to hand stitch your armor to your vest, or you might be able to borrow/own a sewing machine that can punch through thick material.
No Judge Costume is complete without a badge. The orginal badges were brass cold-cast resin with heavy distressing effect applied to the surface. The "Judge Griffin" badge that we had access to was amazingly heavy for being used on a "background costume". The Male badges are 4.25 inches tall, 3.18 inches wide, and .37 inches deep (max) (in metric: 107.45mm, 80.75mm, and 9.33 mm). The 'shield' that makes up the eagles body on the badge is 1.6 inches wide (41.0 mm).
The badge is actually made in 4 parts: A main plate, the eagle top, the letters, and the eagle bottom.
Most of the vest is suspended from the neck collar via 1 inch web straps. (2 or 3) straps hold the back in place, (1) strap holds the top fo the right shoulder, (1) strap holds the top of the left shoudler, and (2) straps hold the front vest. The shoulders are also held in place via elastic straps that attach to the front and back edges of the shoudlers. The oppositer ends of the elastic bands attach to the correponding center points of the back panel or front panels. These elastic straps are all hidden in the inside of the vest and are rarely seen in screencaptures from the movie and are very long (approx 10-12 inches). Their length allows for added comfort and adjustment to the wearer.
Adorning all of the edges of the Spacer Fabric panels is Black Pig Suede Trimming (Rob Allsopp persoanlly confirmed the use of pig skin on the hero costumes). Even on the background vests the production company made sure the edge trimming stayed suede leather and not cloth (cloth is cheaper and a lot of production companies would have opted for that, but not the Dredd Production).
The trim measures 1.25 inches wide with .5 inches exposed on the outside of the vest.
If you are on a budget, and do not have the money to spend on pre-made Suede Leather Trim, look in your local thrift shops for used leather jackets that you can cut the strips off of and flip inside-out to make the trimming. Suede Leather is nothing more than just the rough, under-side of leather.
Attached to the bottom of each shoulder armor is a triangular shaped webstrap holder that secures the shoulder armor to the wearers bicep.
The Webstrap consists of:
During the the 2013 Dragoncon Convention the plastic pull-tab was identified by Dredd key principal costumer Rob Allsopp as an "unknown piece of luggage hardware". Fan-costumer Kurt Struss alerted the Dredd Costuming Community that a lot of parts from the production were purchased from OhioTravelBag.com. The community then quickly identified the hanging greeblie to be a generic luggage handle found in OTB's luggage repair catalog (circa 2012). Sometimes these handles are used for kayak handles. You want to find the "two hole" style greeblie.
Along the sides of the vest are (4) two-inch-wide Cobra® Buckles. These are positioned with the non-adjustable female-end towards the front, and the adjustable male-end towards the back.
On the MALE vest there are two 1-inch Cobra® Buckles (one at each collarbone area) connecting the pectoral armor plates to the back vest panel. The FEMALE vest does not have these 1-inch buckles present.
The movie vests all used UK brand GOLDFINGER "Sovereign Gold" paint. To apply Goldfinger to the armor, squirt some pigment out on to a paper towel, dab your finger into it, brush off the majority of what is on your finger, then lightly (very-very lightly) add the remaining paint to the armor. You want to layer the paint onto the armors surface until it gives you the signature Dredd bronze color. I THINK a bronze or gold spray paint will work in a pinch, but you have to be very light with it. The Dredd 2012 coloring has a lot of the black plastic showing through... and that is what gives the paint it's signature look. We have not tested any spray paints yet.
Anderson and Kaplan's Female Ballistic Vests are very similar in design to the male vests, but they have different sculpted armor panels. Because of the smaller body sizes, the armor panels are slightly smaller in size and the lower chest panels rise higher than the male panels.
Also, on the female vests, there are no 1-inch Cobra buckles present on collar bone straps.
We are currently working on acquiring dimensions for the female vest and hope to offer these up to the fans sometime soon.