The evolution of the biker’s leather jacket

The iconic leather jacket is stylish and timeless and makes you look incredibly good. But there’s no community that embraces it as much as the passionate motorcyclist

If you’re an ’80s kid you’re probably waiting with bated breath for the release of Top Gun Maverick. The first film in the series, Top Gun, came out in 1986 and launched Tom Cruise, the F-14 Tomcat and the Ray-Ban Aviator into the stratosphere that is stardom. There were two other things that you simply couldn’t miss in that movie. Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell’s leather bomber jacket and his Kawasaki GPZ 900R motorcycle. But it wasn’t the first time that a motorcycle rider was seen wearing a leather jacket. That happened back in the 1950s when the original biker movie, the Marlon Brando-starrer The Wild One, hit the theatres.

In fact, even Brando’s Johnny Strabler was merely mimicking real life because bikers have an intrinsic relationship with the leather jacket that has truly transcended time. In the world that was recovering from the aftershocks of the Second World War, the generation that had fought and survived with the scars of the war were just settling down to normalcy. Their next generation, however, had just started to find their own feet, thanks to a growing rock ‘n’ roll music phenomenon and their love for a racy lifestyle. This crop of youth was bubbling at the cusp of rebellion against all things conventional because their own lives simply weren’t as exciting as their previous generation’s who had fought in the War. What they really needed was an icon who could mobilise them as they spoiled for a fight with society.

Into this cauldron rode Johnny Strabler (Brando), the outlaw biker with his irreverent swag, loud motorbike, jauntily worn cap, blue jeans and his black leather jacket. Resentful of restrictive societal norms and utterly dismissive of conventional authority, Strabler’s appeal to the youth was like an addict’s to his drug.

Iconic beginnings

Strabler was an instant hit, and so was his leather jacket. From being a practical item of clothing it became a symbol of something larger. Just a few years later, Brando donned that jacket again in Rebel Without A Cause, cementing the iconic status of the leather jacket. However, its relation to the biker is older. In the early 20th century, the leather jacket, worn over other layers of warm clothing, protected early aviators from the cold. It was in 1928 that Irving Schott designed the world’s very first biker jacket and sold it for $US5.5. During the Second World War, the simple leather jacket had become the bomber jacket. Lined with fleece, these jackets were part of a bomber crew’s outfit, meant to provide protection against extreme exposure. Their demand increased as large numbers were ordered by Air Force contingents across continents, leading to mass production.

When the War ended in 1945, the world was suddenly left with a huge supply of surplus leather jackets. Canny makers like Lewis Leathers in the United Kingdom, saw this as an opportunity and began selling them to post-War Britain’s burgeoning motorcycle brigade. If you were a biker in the 1950s and ’60s in the UK, you just had to have a leather jacket, a tradition that persists till date. So if you went to the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in the United States, you’d see tons of bikers in leather jackets. In fact, if you’re a biker, or even remotely so, you would definitely have one in your closet. It could be a plain leather jacket, or one with a motif. It could be branded, like a Harley-Davidson or a Royal Enfield or a Triumph. There’s no denying the style but biker jackets have improved, too, with better impact protection being integrated into the ones you’re meant to wear when you ride a bike but the ones that are meant to just ensure you look good are just as good.

So if you wish to be marked out as someone willing to buck the trend, someone who wouldn’t always want to play by the rules, isn’t afraid of authority and has a motorcycle in their garage, there’s no way you wouldn’t have one.

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