11/07/2015
THE AWKWARD HISTORY OF THE LEATHER JACKET
According to Mick Farren’s book, “The Black Leather Jacket,” the leather jacket, as we know it, was likely to have first been made for German aviators during World War I. However, the perfecto jacket–essentially the best private order of all time–was created in 1928, some years after WWI.The jackets were created through a partnership between Beck Industries, a Harley-Davidson distributor, and Irving Schott. It is reported that Beck asked Schott to design him a leather jacket that could withstand extreme weather and most types of accidents. Upon receiving the jacket Schott decided to name it “Perfecto” after his favorite brand of cigar. The real interest of this anecdote is that the jacket was essentially a shortened version of the leather jackets worn during WWI. However, the design varied slightly in that Beck Industries specifically asked for a zipper, presumably because the majority of the popular leather styles of the time had buttons.