History of the Leather Jacket: From 1928 to Today 

The leather jacket has been in continuous production and continuous relevance for nearly a century—an unusual record for any garment. It has survived multiple fashion cycles not because it trends but because it works: a structured, protective outer layer that holds its shape, ages with character, and reads across an implausibly wide range of contexts. This is the history of how it got here. Browse the full leather jacket range at our all-leather jackets collection. 

1928: The Perfecto and the Start of It All 

In 1928, Irving Schott designed the first mass-produced motorcycle jacket for Harley-Davidson, sold initially at Harley dealers on Long Island for $5.50. He named it the Perfecto after his favorite cigar. The key design decisions — asymmetric off-center zip (to prevent wind from catching a center zip at speed), wide snap-down lapels that lie flat while riding, zippered pockets, and a short body ending at the natural waist — were all functional choices. Every leather biker jacket produced in the century since descends from this piece. See the lineage in our biker jackets. 

1930s–1940s: Military Aviation Heritage 

Military aviation created the other great leather jacket lineage in parallel. The A-2 flight jacket—smooth brown leather, knit waistband and cuffs, center zip, no collar—was issued to US Army Air Corps officers from 1931 and became standard issue through WWII. The B-3 shearling bomber jacket was issued in 1934 for cold-altitude bomber crews: a sheepskin shell outside and dense wool inside, the warmest leather outerwear produced before modern insulation. The G-1 naval aviator jacket consolidated the flight jacket design in 1947 with the distinctive fur collar that has defined the silhouette ever since. See the shearling lineage in our fur and shearling jackets. 

1953: The Rebel Arrives 

Marlon Brando wore a Schott Perfecto in the 1953 film The Wild One—the most culturally significant single appearance of a leather jacket in history. The film associated the black leather biker jacket with outsider identity, menace, and physical authority in the American imagination. School boards banned it. That reaction sealed its cultural position permanently. The jacket had not changed; what changed was the story around it. From 1953 forward, wearing a black leather jacket carried a specific set of social signals that no other garment conveyed. 

1960s–1970s: Punk and the Rock Uniform 

The leather jacket moved into British rock culture in the 1960s—the look of the Teddy Boys and the British Invasion bands—and reached its loudest cultural moment in the 1970s punk scene. The Ramones wore matching black leather bikers as a de facto uniform from their 1974 founding; the look became indistinguishable from the music. London punk added studs, pins, and patches to the same basic Perfecto silhouette, which introduced the idea of the leather jacket as a personal canvas. Punk also established the leather jacket as inherently anti-establishment—the opposite of its military-utility origin. 

1980s–1990s: Mainstream and High Fashion 

The 1980s brought the leather jacket into mainstream outerwear. Film, television, and pop music all used the leather jacket as character shorthand for toughness, coolness, and independence — but the audiences for those productions were mainstream, not subcultural. By the early 1990s, the leather jacket was no longer a signal of anything specific; it was simply outerwear. Simultaneously, high fashion began treating it seriously—Versace, Gianni, and others in the Italian and Parisian circuits incorporated leather jackets into collections that had previously ignored them. 

2000s–Present: Luxury, Artisan, and the Current Era 

The 2000s brought a luxury tier to leather jackets that had not existed before — Helmut Lang, Balenciaga, and later Acne Studios and Saint Laurent elevated the material and silhouette into high-fashion territory with four-figure price points. The 2010s added the streetwear dimension: leather as part of the broader casualwear luxury movement. The current era is defined by artisan production—bespoke leather jackets made to individual measurements, with woven, embossed, and specialist constructions that require the kind of hand skill that fast fashion cannot replicate. Browse the artisan range in our best sellers. 

What Has Not Changed 

Through a century of the leather jacket, the core variables have remained fixed: full-grain leather (the best hide quality), cut to fit the body at the key structural points, with hardware that serves a function before it serves aesthetics. The biker jacket Irving Schott designed in 1928 would be wearable today without modification. The A-2 bomber jacket from 1931 is still produced in essentially unchanged form. The G-1 is still in military issue. The durability of the design is the durability of the category. For a bespoke piece that will last as long, see our bespoke process. 

Frequently Asked Questions 

When was the leather jacket invented? 

The first mass-produced motorcycle leather jacket—the Schott Perfecto—was designed in 1928 by Irving Schott and sold through Harley-Davidson dealers for $5.50. Military flight jackets predated this in function but reached their definitive form in the A-2 (1931), B-3 (1934), and G-1 (1947). The modern leather jacket as a fashion and outerwear staple effectively begins with Schott in 1928. 

Why did leather jackets become popular? 

Two converging influences. Military adoption from the 1930s through WWII produced millions of leather flight jackets and exposed a generation of American men to quality leather outerwear. The 1953 film The Wild One with Marlon Brando associated the black biker jacket with outsider identity, which paradoxically made it desirable to a far broader audience. The combination of genuine quality and cultural resonance is what made the leather jacket a century-long wardrobe staple. 

Who invented the leather jacket? 

Irving Schott of Schott NYC designed the first mass-produced motorcycle leather jacket — the Perfecto — in 1928. Military flight jacket history begins slightly earlier in the 1910s-1920s, with the definitive A-2 design formalized in 1931. Schott is broadly credited as the originator of the civilian leather jacket as we know it. 

Why did Marlon Brando wear a leather jacket in The Wild One? 

He wore a Schott Perfecto 618 motorcycle jacket, likely sourced from a costume or prop supply for the film. The character he played was the leader of a motorcycle gang, and the jacket was the functional, authentic outerwear of that subculture. The jacket was not a costume invention — it was the real thing, which is what gave the image its authenticity and longevity. 

 

Is the leather jacket still fashionable? 

The leather jacket has been continuously fashionable for roughly 70 years, across every major style era. It is more accurately described as a wardrobe staple than a fashion trend—it does not trend in and out the way seasonal styles do. It shifts in silhouette and surface treatment from decade to decade, but the core leather jacket has never been unfashionable for any sustained period since the 1950s.