Biker style started with a jacket almost 100 years ago and today it’s a trend that continues to look cool, tough and rebellious.
It was New York in 1928 and Irving Schott needed an idea. The son of Russian immigrants, he had been making fur-lined raincoats in a tenement basement on the Lower East Side since 1913 with his brother Jack.
Irving puffed on his cigar – his favourite, the Perfecto – and inspiration struck. What he didn’t know is that 90 years later his Perfecto jacket would move uptown to the Museum of Modern Art to be lauded as a fashion icon.
He decided to create a leather jacket with an asymmetrical zip to keep out the wind and rain and named it after his tobacco product of choice.
It wasn’t enough that Schott Bros were blazing a trail in the outerwear industry by putting zips on jackets – theirs had to go sideways.
From biker to bomber
Irving sold his tough new biker jacket to a Harley Davidson dealer for $5.50 and a new highway in fashion history opened up before them.
Production of the Perfecto was halted during the war as the Schotts made bomber jackets for the military.
Then along came the Fifties, Marlon Brando and Jimmy Dean. Cool and rebellious, for them the jacket was a perfect fit – not so for the school system which banned the jacket and sales decreased.
In the Seventies the Ramones made the Perfecto punk and when production moved to New Jersey, local rocker Bruce Springsteen wore his as a symbol of the working man. In the Eighties Joan Jett pinched the look for girls.
Today it’s still the jacket of choice for rebels with or without a cause.
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