REBEL wanted. Sort of.
In 2008, it seems odd to romanticize a grease-smudged guy who can fine-tune a Triumph carburetor, given that today’s real hero is someone who can fix the settings on your Mac’s outgoing mail server. And those old-school rebels always burned through a lot of fossil fuels. Hey, Mr. Muscle Car, how about a Prius? Or a Vespa?
The good news for today’s smarter rebels is that fashion has evolved — or at least the leather jacket has.
Since the early 1980s, when American men first truly embraced the leather jacket as the antihero’s anti-sport coat, a new one has risen from the tomb of rebels past every six or seven years. In the 1980s, there was the ’40s-style WWII bomber (very Indiana Jones), then, in the late 1980s, the ’50s-style motorcycle jacket (very Mad Max). In the 1990s, the ’70s hip-length jacket (very John Shaft) had a moment, followed by the 1960s-style streamlined “cafe racer” that would shout Steve McQueen if McQueen ever shouted.
Along the way, there were other influences: the zipper-rich style worn by Michael Jackson (circa “Thriller”) and the wild stitching, coloring and padding that the motocross world brought in.
Now the answer seems to be (e) all of the above. Mirroring the creative liberties that denim makers have taken in recent years, lines like D&G, Dsquared, Diesel and Neil Barrett have been merging many elements — the ribbed waist of a bomber, the lean body of a cafe racer, epaulets from Marlon Brando’s “Wild One” jacket, zippers — into a new style that is as stylish as it is un-iconic.
“They’ve taken fighter pilot jackets, motorcycle jackets, motocross, you name it, the whole vernacular,” said Valerie Steele, the director of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology. “If you’re thinking in terms of authenticity, this isn’t it. It’s a softer, nicer black leather jacket. It’s not as tough, maybe because everyone is wise to all the semantics now.”
Dan Caten, one of Dsquared twin-brother designers, explained the look. “The leather is a little tumbled and vintage-looking and washed, so zippers don’t lie perfectly flat,” he said. “What I like is that it can give you tough-guy quality without being tough. I wear it with everything — I like it with chinos and a shirt and tie — so you decide how much edge you want.”
That the jacket resists easy characterization is part of its appeal. “It’s not so identifiable,” said Michael Macko, the men’s-fashion director of Saks Fifth Avenue. “It’s like ‘motor related.’ I don’t think young, modern-thinking men want two wardrobes anymore. They don’t want a leather jacket they can only wear at night. They want one they can wear to work, with a shirt and tie and maybe a vest, so that means finding the right one and spending a little more for it.”
Erik Rocca, an assistant director of a 57th Street photo gallery, fits this demographic, having just shelled out $700 for a G-Star black leather jacket with a ribbed waistband, a lean cut and a multitude of patch pockets. “It was more than I wanted to spend,” he said, “and I obsessed about whether it was perfect or not. Then I broke down and went back and got it.”
The designer Neil Barrett said that what is appealing about the look is that everyone interprets it somewhat differently (both the designers and the men who wear them). “It feels more personal,” he said. “Guys put them on, and they just don’t want to take them off. And, you know, they mold to your body with heat, so the owner becomes the owner of the jacket.”
But he did attribute its rise to one man: today’s answer to Steve McQueen.
“We call it the Brad Pitt jacket around here,” said Mr. Barrett, who explained that since Mr. Pitt wore one of his vintage-looking, washed-leather jackets three years ago to the premiere of “Mr. & Mrs. Smith,” sales of his leather jackets jumped to more than 3,000 from 40 or 50 a season.
You’d call it the Brad Pitt jacket, too.
Given that Mr. Pitt’s upstart activities generally involve philanthropic projects like housing in New Orleans rather than the race-car machismo of McQueen, it’s appropriate that the rebel’s creed — and his leather jacket — get a smart and stylish update.
