efore the black leather jacket was reduced to another innocuous darling of the fashion world, it was an honored utility—a form of arthropod armor worn by the less-than-gentle men who roamed the fraying fringes of a disquieted society. The original BLJ silhouette, in fact, was donned by German fighter pilots in both World War I and World War II. Throughout the 1930s and ’40s, the U.S. military followed suit, as leather jackets became standard uniforms for both American troops and police officers. However, it would not be long before the citizenry and street urchins seized and subverted this talisman of authority.
“Leather-laden outlaws struck fear into the hearts of civilians and cops alike, as they tore through towns with gleeful irreverence.”
Bikers were the first outsiders to take note of the black leather jacket’s utilitarian value, as their inevitable brawls with gravel meant wearing road rash on their leather rather than their comparatively feeble flesh. In 1928, New York designer Irving Schott introduced the “Perfecto,” a zipped and belted hunk o’ hide that reigned as the ideal BLJ silhouette for decades to come. As Schott’s design was originally distributed by Harley-Davidson, the “Perfecto” soon became the saucily soiled flag flown by the most vicious of motorcycle gangs, most notably, the notorious Hells Angels.
