I’ve just splurged on a new – well, secondhand – leather jacket. Which means that I’ve fallen in love with this rock’n'roll totem all over again, just as I did upon taking charge of each of the many other, seemingly ‘perfect’ leather jackets that have passed into my greasy mitts over the years.
Compared to many other areas of male clothing, the leather jacket has spawned a serious number of sartorial wowzers and bow-wow-we-wow-sers. For every Michael Jackson abomination (hilariously lampooned in the Comic Strip film, “The Supergrass”), there’s a Peter Fonda in “The Wild Angels”. For every Jeremy Clarkson wannabe in a ‘re-imagined’ designer jacket (made out of the parts of animal hide that other cows couldn’t reach), there’s some old biker blasting past in a jacket that’s ensured he’s cut a swathe through life for over 40 years, come rain or shine.
When it comes to leather jackets, beauty’s in the eye, ear (listen for the creak), and the (usually, slightly restricted) shoulder movement of the beholder. Not only is it, as Mick Farren suggests in his excellent tome, “The Black Leather Jacket”, modern street armour, but a great example also taps into a fundamental male need: it’s incredibly dependable (even when you’re not) and will last for eons (leaving you looking good as a corpse).
For an impeccably-crafted, classically-designed, jaw-droppingly satisfying leather jacketing experience, you can forget the high street or mainstream designer names. They’re all terrible quality, badly cut and ugly. And for a little more or less money, you can have a really great jacket or coat…
It’s all about such legendary marques as Lewis / Aviakit, Perfecto / Schott, Aero, Eastman, Hercules, Buco, Sportcraft, Mascot and literally hundreds more, some of which are still turning out top quality goods today. In musical terms, the very names of these animal schmata mfgs are whispered by thrift store ghosts, boot fair poltergeists and Fleabay wraiths in much the same manner as a ska fiend may drop the name of the Doctor Bird label, or a jazzer go all goey at the thought of first-press Blue Note albums with the ‘dish’ that runs round the inside of the label. Whether horsehide, steerhide, goat- or pony-skin, these premium jackets and coats are expensive items (were back then, and still are) but will certainly last you a lifetime, bar the odd replacement of zippers, cuffs etc and a good going-over with hide feed once a year. And you’d be surprised at the range of great styles of jackets and coats on offer, in designs dating from the 1930s onwards – check out the links above or this excellent Canadian blog…
For me, it all started with a three-button, black, slightly too large mid-60s over-jacket job I bought off Leicester market for a tenner when I was 16. I thought, in all honesty, that it made me look like one of The Downliners Sect, which seemed a pretty marvellous thing at the time, and wore it everywhere for years, even using it to kip under when bumping across Europe on tour, in an old Commer van that strongly resembled an overgrown dodgem car.
Mick Farren recounted the strange and wonderful feeling of slipping on a brand new Lewis Leathers jacket as a freshly-minted teen, but this type of steerhide bar mitzvah was always denied to me, simply due to lack of funds. Instead, over the past quarter century, I’ve owned and loved a motley crew of the seam-split, the flakey, the badly-sized and those jackets or coats I got cheap off Fleabay and hoped would fit.
Some lovely leathers, mind… I paid £1 to an old gal at a jumble sale in Stamford Hill for a WW2 horsehide dispatch rider’s coat so heavy you’d have sworn that Nazi gold had been hidden in the lining. I bagged a mint, late-50s Lewis Leather Bronx model – probably the quintessential jacket for British rock’n'roll fans of any age – from a stall in Brick Lane market for £15. And I picked up a flaky but amazing 1940s British coat, a Militus, for a tenner from a lady who’d worn it every weekend on Camden Market for 20 years, which looked like it came straight off an extra from the awesome ’50s road movie, “Hell Drivers”. But as great as these jackets were, in the words of Peter Cook, I sought “yet further kicks”…
Which brings me to my recent purchase, off Fleabay, of an Aero-made steerhide brute that’s by far the finest piece of clothing I’ve ever owned, bar the odd Stetson hat, dead man’s suit, gabardine shirt or pair of vintage bike boots. When I sit down, the jacket’s so thick that it’s still standing up, but it’ll break in soon enuff, thanks to Bath’s penchant for drawing rain down from every passing cloud. And I know I’ll be able to depend on it for the next 25 years, at least. Which ain’t bad for £100, I reckon.
Meanwhile, there’s still DIY to be done…
