My brother Sam had just shared a photo dump of some influencer doing an autumn “capsule wardrobe” video they found online. You know the type. Dude films himself talking in front of a beige flat lay while suggesting you donate that leather jacket you love because, girl? It’s “so 2015.” We’re six in our group chat and two minutes, maybe three, later we were arguing about whether leather jackets were officially over. Someone sent a laughing emoji. Someone else sent a full essay on how tanned cowhide is “over.” I looked down at my phone, set it down, and went to look at the jacket hanging behind my door.
It used to be my dad’s jacket and as I looked at it I thought, no.
Hell no. You guys are all wrong.
Look, before I go any further, here’s why I actually take issue with claims that leather jackets went out of style:
It makes leather sound like one thing. One trend that spikes then dips like low-rise skinny jeans did. It’s not. A biker jacket made in 1998 does the same thing as a biker jacket made this year. Flies on your shoulders the same way, zips up the same assymmetric zip that’s been a thing since all of us were too small to buy our own jackets, etc. Trends ebb and flow through colour and silhouette and styling, yes. But the actual item? The leather itself, the seams, how it ages. That doesn’t fall in and out of favour because it never mattered if it was fashionable to begin with. It’s construction. And clothing construction never goes out of style.
The fit and the build, because that’s where trendy actually happens
If you’re going to insist that leather jackets are dated, that’s cool. But you’re talking about one specific cut. The bulky, artificially padded shiny finish garbage people bought freshman year of college in the early 2000s? Hell yeah that looks dated. Like anything with huge amounts of easily identified shoulder padding looks dated, leather or not. But that’s on the cut of the jacket, not the material it’s made of. Force someone into a jacket that fits correctly through the body, close to the shoulder seam without pulling overhead, ending right at the hip? Suddenly no one from that group chat is accusing it of being costume-y. They’ll ask where you got it.
I hacked up the seams on my dad’s jacket before I’d ever worn it properly because I couldn’t help but tug on them in suspicion like I did when I was little. The stitching running down the shoulder bones was still taught after, I don’t know, probably close to two decades of him wearing it. That’s what matters when you’re looking at something and trying to decide if it’s dated or just old. Cheap jackets fall apart at the shoulder first. Period. Seam starts to gap, or that area of leather gets shiny and worn from too much rubbing because that’s where all the movement is concentrated. Reaching for something on a shelf, pulling your bag strap across, shrugging another coat over top. A well made jacket won’t do that. It keeps moving with you for years after everything around it has changed and the fact it can still do its job after year twenty? Is basic math, not a statement on fashion at all.
What actually goes out of style is everyone buying the exact same shitty version because it was affordable at Target. Thin, shiny, cut too wide in the body because that’s cheaper to pattern, worn with all the season’s exact styling. That’s not leather jackets going out of style. That’s one iteration of a leather jacket over saturating the market then promptly giving people permission to move on as soon as something new comes along. Confuse those two ideas and you’ll find yourself throwing out a jacket that would’ve survived three iterations of “what’s trendy” if you just accepted it in a different cut.
How you wear it, because thats the part everyone messes up
See, the other side to this argument I had in my group chat (and the half nobody wanted to acknowledge) is that leather jackets themselves will only read as dated or trendy based almost entirely on what you’re wearing underneath and around it, not the jacket. Throw it overtop every part of your outfit that was trending in 2011; slim jeans, god help you that scarf situation, ballet flats. The whole outfit is going to scream “delete photo.” Throw that exact jacket over something popular now; loose trousers, plain tee, boots that actually want to be seen. All of a sudden it looks like you know what you’re doing. The jacket isn’t suddenly trendy again because it changed. Everything under it did.
I wore mine all throughout Seattle’s rainy, horrible February which for the weather-impatient masses means rain that isn’t falling hard. It’s just constant and cold in a way that seeps into your bones after a while.
Leather handles that better than most people realise; it doesn’t absorb like some thin synthetic blend will and honestly? The weight of it actually helps when it gets cold out. What I noticed wearing mine that month wasn’t it struggling to keep up with trends I couldn’t see. It was that every single person who stopped me to comment wasn’t talking about how outdated leather jackets were. They said nice things about how I paired it with boots. The jacket itself was doing exactly what jackets do. I styled something current underneath it.
Isn’t really the point of the whole conversation if you want to be honest. Leather jackets will never go out of style in the same way straight-leg jeans or bootcuts will because it isn’t a single trend, it’s an all-season base you style everything else around. Some people choose to wear it with outdated assolves and then cry leather jacket when it looks horrendous. Other people know how to style them and suddenly the jacket looks ten years ahead of the curve.
Same bitch. Completely different review based solely on what they chose to wear underneath.
Hell, next time this happens? Take note of who says leather jackets are over then look at what the hell they’re wearing with everything. I’ll bet you it’s not the leather jacket they need to take off their stupid asses. So no. Sam convinced no one in that group chat and probably never will. My dad’s jacket is staying hung up behind my door, the seams aren’t falling out, the shoulders still lay perfect and it will most certainly outlive this ‘season’s piece du’trend. Ask me in ten years, I’ll still be wearing it.
