Right after the epic underwater portions on the wreck of the Maria Doria in Tomb Raider 2, Lara makes her way back to the surface in the offshore rig where she steals Marcoli Bartoli's flying boat to the next destination, the Barkhang Monastery...
Lara finds a bomber jacket on board the flying boat. Just like the SOLA wetsuit, Lara's bomber jacket becomes another iconic wardrobe change in her adventures, and cosplayers try to get it matching as close as they can! 🙂
Lara cosplayers just dress in her short shorts underneath, but for the bomber jacket itself it looks best if can use the real insignia on her shoulders of course. Luckily the left one is big enough to recognize it as the Eighth Army Air Force patch.
The patch on her right arm ended up quite small though, and I think it would have stayed indecipherable for me without the help of other people's! Luckily Tomb Raider fans had found it a long time ago already: link! It's the 324th Bomb Squadron! If you know what you're looking for, I think you can recognize it as Bugs Bunny holding a bomb in front of a cloud. 😀
I think from the first time I played Tomb Raider 2 I would probably already recognized it only if the game developers would have told it in interviews or something, because the small textures are just so small (and it would be 2024 for the Remakes before making them bigger of course 😉)
Interesting though, the flight patches seem to be switched in the renders where the Eight Air Force patch is on the right shoulder while Bugs Bunny is on the left (?):
Which way you end up wearing them though (according to the renders or like in the game) you can simply buy the flight patches to make your own Lara bomber jacket cosplay! 😀
(and if you're not yet satisfied for Tomb Raider II memorabilia, as a bonus you can even get the Barbarella pin-up that the creators made for the art on Marco Bartoli's flying boat! 😉)
Stay tuned and have fun building!
