Women's Health Supermodel and Fashion design

Leather jacket Wikipedia

A leatherjacket is a type of crane fly.

Image:Movielordsofflatbush.jpg|thumb|Leather jackets
A leather jacket is a piece of clothing|outerwear. It is usually brown, dark grey or black in color. This item of clothing has achieved iconic status in the 20th century, and has become associated with many subcultures in different places and times. Since leather jackets can be styled in many different ways many different versions have come to be associated with these different groups. For instance, they have often been associated with bikers, military aviators, punks, and police, which have worn versions designed for protective purposes and often for their potentially intimidating appearance.

Popularized by Marlon Brando's Jimmy Strabler character in The Wild One (1953) and by James Dean in 1955's Rebel Without A Cause as well as Michael Pare in the Eddie And The Cruisers film duo, leather jackets were popular with United States and British youth from the "greaser" subculture in the 1950s and early 1960s. A later depiction of this style of jacket and time was "The Fonz" in the television series "Happy Days" which was produced in the 1970s but depicted life in the 1950s. The Fonz's leather jacket is now housed in the Smithsonian Institution, and the Grease movie duo has
also since popularized leather jackets with their T-Birds male
clique.

The leather jackets worn by aviators and members of the military were brown in color and frequently called "Bomber jackets" as seen on numerous stars in the 1940s and 1950s such as James Stewart (actor)|Jimmy Stewart in the 1957 film, Night Passage. While the black leather jacket fad ended in the early 1960s, bomber jackets, often with sheep|sheepskin collars, have remained popular to this day. They can be seen in the 1986 film, Top Gun.

There are many more examples of iconic leather jackets worn in popular cultue, such as the one worn by the T-800 character of The Terminator movies, in which became the main trademark of the Terminator cyborg, former WWE Wrestler Bret Hart's trademark leather jacket, leather jackets worn by members of the Black Panthers in the 1960s and 1970s, punk rock groups such as the Ramones, members of heavy metal subcultures, etc. It is notable that in most examples the jackets have been worn by people cultivating an intimidating and potentially violent or rebellious image.

There is a substantial difference between leather jackets made for fashionable purposes and for protective purposes (for activities like motorcycle riding). Leather jackets designed for protective use are safety equipment designed to protect the wearer from serious injury and are heavier, thicker, and often equipped with armor, thus becoming a very practical item of clothing regardless of the symbolism invested in them by popular culture. A leather jacket primarily designed for fashion purposes is not likely to be much use in a motorcycle accident.

See also: Motorcycle safety clothing





Category:Fashion
Category:clothing

Last Modified:   2005-12-15