What ever happened to the biker jacket?

During the fashion month that ends next Tuesday along with Paris Fashion Week, we saw everything and more. However, there was one big absentee on the runways: the biker jacket. Appearing only in the collections of Celine, Undercover and Rhude, that clothing icon inspired by the Perfecto Jacket created in 1928 by Irving Schott and later becoming famous as the biker jacket or double rider jacket, was seen virtually nowhere. Replacing it, however, are all the other types of leather jackets: the most popular is the racer jacket, the one with the round buttoned collar worn by Rosalìa to be clear; right behind is the blouson, simple with a zipper and collar, along with the flight jacket family, which includes shearling jackets and the classic MA-1 Bomber Jacket. Without descending too far into taxonomy, it is curious to note how, considering the popularity of the biker aesthetic, pushed to the max this year by Rosalìa with Motomami and also recounted in the new volume 2 SPEED BIKING by Elodie Marteau and Lou Jacobée published by nss and due out next March 6, the waning of the classic biker jacket is indicative of a more general evolution that has brought the biker aesthetic out of the realm of denim and black leather and has instead expanded the fashion exploration to the full spectrum of the subculture of modern bikers, ranging from the world of motocross to that of super-accessorized scooters, from the romantic world of Harleys and their merch to that of futuristic motorcycles. In the midst of this multifaceted universe lies an entire cultural mythology that, around two wheels, orbits music, cinema, archival research, a variety of athletic disciplines, cultural cross-overs in the case of jackets "sponsored" by brands such as Marlboro or Red Bull, and even sneakers for a time. No less, the garment that started it all seems to have disappeared. What ever happened to the biker jacket?

Let's start from the premise that the biker jacket has not entirely disappeared from the catwalks. Besides the excellent cases of Celine, Rhude and Undercover, which have interpreted it with relative fidelity and adherence to the original, many variations on the theme have appeared: the hybrid ones by Courrèges and Junya Watanabe, who made a cape and a formal jacket from it, respectively; the gem-encrusted version by Moschino, the monumental ones by Juun J and Doublet seen in Paris at the end of January, the oversize one by British brand Helen Anthony and, of course, the fur-trimmed one by Proenza Schouler. Be that as it may, even these appearances alone testify to how the popularity of the classic biker jacket has been decreasing - which is strange considering that that of the motorcycle aesthetic has increased. 

Trying to analyze the factors that led to this loss of popularity, a few hypotheses can be made. The main one is that the racing jacket is more easily reinterpreted than the classic biker jacket. Universally recognized as the most minimal leather jacket model, the racing jacket also exists in the form of a motocross jackets covered with logos and sponsor colors derived from the MotoGP or MXGP world. One might also add the fact that if the classic biker jacket is linked to 1950s or at most 1980s vintage imagery, the racing jacket falls into the 1990s and early 2000s sphere frequented by today's fashion - with the sole exception of a certain viral archival garment recently seen wearing Nigo, a 1960s model of a Swedish Army motorcycle jacket that, however, has a lighter canvas construction, a double-breasted pocket like an anorak, and a type of buttoning that goes close to the archetypal Perfecto but then conspicuously distances itself from it.

The last and boldest hypothesis on the gradual disappearance of the biker jacket is the one concerning fast fashion. If the biker jacket remains mostly absent from the catwalks, it is very common to see it on the street but almost never in its authentic leather version, only in the more accessible faux-leather version sold by the major fast fashion brands. Thanks to the post-2010 fast fashion boom and the spread of hipster/indie aesthetics, the biker jacket has become a regular presence in the catalogs of H&M, Zara, Bershka and a large number of other similar brands that have taken advantage of its timeless design and high prices to offer cheap versions of it completely devoid of the rigid structure and texture that "real" models possess. Which is illogical since the function of the jacket lies precisely in its ability to protect against wind and cold thanks to its leather construction, which is often quite stiff too. 

Thus vulgarized, the biker jacket has become increasingly popular but also increasingly insignificant, with a considerable dilution of its importance and an almost total loss of its historical meaning. We might also add that the very iconicity of the biker jacket, whose design has remained essentially unchanged for nearly a century, doesn't really lend itself to reinventions and innovations - to change its structure would be to make it unrecognizable and, in essence, to make it just another kind of jacket. In contemporary fashion history, perhaps the most authentic reinterpretation of the original model has been that of Our Legacy, which in the two-year lockdown period incorporated it into its imagery that we might call Swedish Grunge with great consistency and by extracting it from that haute rock vibe into which Hedi Slimane and his Saint Laurent had recontextualized it.

Last note to make is about the archival world. Major retailers including Silver League, Middleman Store own a few classic biker jackets, the former has one by Raf Simons, the latter a fur-covered one by Dolce & Gabbana. The rest of their catalogs include numerous racing jackets especially by Yohji Yamamoto, Tom Ford's Gucci, Helmut Lang, and Maison Margiela. On Vertical Rags one can find a cotton one by Dries Van Noten, along with several racer jackets by Prada, Rick Owens, Comme des Garçons, and Dior. Also on Vinted the classic biker jackets, present in versions from numerous brands including Gucci and Alexander McQueen, are present in greater proportion - also highlighting how the biker jacket category costs on average much more than the others even though with the same design there is not huge difference between the designer and vintage versions from other brands with the obvious exception of the faux leather models produced by fast fashion brands that cost even a few euros. At this point we could speculate that the biker jacket is a piece to invest in but is perhaps unpopular with archival lovers since the various designer versions from disparate brands are not too different from vintage or Schott or Harley-Davidson originals. 

Will the tradional biker jacket get itself out of this limbo? Probably, after all, it can't go away, but one can hardly say that the winds of trends are blowing in its favor. For years, after all, the biker jacket was the quintessential leather jacket, and so just now that leather jackets are experiencing a new (umpteenth) renaissance, thanks to brands like Miu Miu or pages like @uniformdisplay, all models are back in popularity except the original one. We could also speculate that the popularity of racing jackets goes hand in hand with the success of supersport and streetfighter bikes, just as that of biker jackets is affected by the decline in popularity of classic choppers. But here we remain always in the realm of speculation.