For a long time I thought leather jackets and rain were cats and baths; designed solely to cause maximum agony to the living creature unfortunate enough to own them both. I thought this with the authority of someone who had never tested that theory once and had simply repeated what their dad told them outside a takeaway in Whitby in 1998. “You’ll ruin it.” He said, cradling a bin bag over my newly purchased (faux, it turns out, but I didn’t know that part yet) leather jacket like it was a kidney from a donor. That particular sentence burned itself into my memory, where it hissed angrily at me like an ember in a coal burns for approximately fifteen years until three weeks ago when I stood out in an ACTUAL FROM THE HEAVENS END-of-days rainstorm outside Deptford station in an ACTUAL leather jacket that cost more than my monthly rent and had roughly four seconds to decide if I was running for cover or waiting to be soaked.
I waited to be soaked.
Partly because the bus stop was tiny and I was the end of the line. Partly because I decided, in an adrenaline fuelled journalistic “screw it” moment completely disproportionate to the situation, that I was damn well testing this THEORY out once and for all. Let the cruel Greek fates smirk at their accuracy.
No, this isn’t a washing label printed out on a font that looks like it was run over by slightly sloshed. This is what actually happened when my favourite jacket got wet, dried, panicked over and interrogated about its life choices by a man named Denny who repairs leather for a living and was currently regarding me with the sort of pity usually reserved for felons accused of strangling infants.
“The rule” everyone chants but nobody actually tests
Look.
Leather and rain don’t mix isn’t WRONG, it’s just extremely misleading, kind of like saying “sugar is bad for you”. Obviously if you eat a whole cake to yourself your body is gonna react badly but that’s not a statement about a satsuma. Leather is skin. Processed skin. Dyed skin. Finished skin, but skin none the less and that gets wet constantly without falling to pieces. In fact getting wet is sort of its fucking selling point. Soaking leather damages leather is simplistic because what actually causes harm isn’t the water landing on it, it’s everything that happens AFTERWARDS. Water being left to soak into the fibres too long, drying too quickly by your boiler or drying out without any of the natural oils replaced once it started. The last one is where things get bad.
Bonus sad trombone moment, I spent days googling this. DAYS. Everyone restates the rule as if they heard it from Leather Jackets Themselves but tries in vain to explain anything more when you ask. I couldn’t find anyone who had enough knowledge to give me a clear answer. I could find lots of people vaguely threatening doom if I got my jacket wet written by individuals who have presumably never lived through more than three consecutive days of rain in their lives.
Instead I found Denny. A tiny, family-run leather repair shop near where I used to work whose website worried me so much I’ve asked them verbally instead. He’s fixed things for me before including boot repair and a strap on my favourite bag that I murdered by going through a car door. He had zero fucks to give. “A good jacket. Real leather. Well finished” he said, proper matter of fact about it “will happily handle getting rained on.”
“What kills it,” And he paused there. Let the words marinate on my defences. “…Is people panicking afterwards.”
Panicking, drying it near a radiator, trying to speed up the process with a hairdryer. THOSE are the things that wreck leather. Not the fact that you stood in the rain. All that matters is what you do in the thirty minutes after you get inside.
Actually getting soaked by rain:
Deptford. Thursday 6pm
In fairness to me, I did try to find an umbrella. By the time I actually opened my dusty copy and started using it the damage was done. I WANT TO BE CLEAR ABOUT HOW HEAVY IT WAS WHEN I SAT DOWN TO WRITE THIS BECAUSE “heavy rain” is subjective and also made up until you’ve actually been soaking wet on a public street. This wasn’t rain. This was a tidal wave tears cried by heaven whenever it looks down on London. The pavements had a sheen within 45 seconds and even the bus shelter, NB bus shelter= LAST RESORT, had been claimed by six sets of directly touching strangers by the time I got there.
So I stood there.
Eleven minutes. I timed it because it was oddly satisfying counting out my demise whilst also trying to Google home remedies for leather jackets that involve cooking appliances. By the time I stopped, soaked TWELFTH IN LINE for shelter despite being RIGHT FUCKING NEXT TO THE COVER, my jacket wasn’t just wet, it was water logged. The shoulders and back were soaking wet. We’re talking dark, heavy wet here, not leather looking shiny because that’s still dry leather, ACTUALLY wet leather.
I took a picture and sent it to my friend Priya with the caption “this is either totally fine or a £280 mistake”. She’d witnessed the purchase so had deep opinions at the time over whether I needed another jacket when clearly I didn’t.
Her response, verbatim “why are you STILL standing out here, get inside.”
I did not. I stood another four minutes looking at a pigeon who, at that moment, had better life choices than me because he just sat there watching the water pool around his feet. Doesn’t he know how hard I’m fighting for this! I COULDN’T EVEN GET A VALID BIRDS ATTESTATION PHOTO OP RIGHT? !
By the time I got inside the leather had gone darker in patches and there was a slight “ow” when I moved my arm at the shoulder but nothing too drastic. It didn’t feel dry or stiff immediately like I’d imagined. It just felt like it had been really fucking stressed out, which to be fair, it had.
All I didn’t do was panic and put it near a radiator to dry.
Honestly, don’t do that. I KNOW YOU WANT TO, we all did it once. Ten years ago when I first moved to London I bought a second hand jacket from a market stall in Camden that I loved so much I was basically miserable all winter because it made me feel like I was in a band I’d never actually listened to. Got that parked over a radiator once and just like THAT turned a beloved jacket into a dipped burnt pastry. It hung awkwardly off me for the rest of its life stubbornly staying stiff in the shoulders like it’d just seen something terrible. That wasn’t rinsing it in the rain’s fault. THAT was me and the heater.
So this time when I got home. HANGER. AWAY FROM THE RADIISSSSSSSS. Inch or two away from the radiator, because comfort. Open window (not broken, living on the top floor remember) and left it for about eighteen hours. Literally left it.
IT HUNG THERE.
Watching, judging.
Testing.
Unlike every other time I’ve left something damp near a heat source I didn’t continually check it, poke at it, try and speed up the process by holding my hand next to it. Nothing. Just left it to be.
Maintenance protocols you’re never told about, and the ONE product that actually works (and isn’t a £15 jar of nothing)
Dry. It was actually, dry. Like not touch dry, not if-you-ignore-it-it’ll-get-better dry, REAL dry before I did anything else. Then. And this is where you get to feel smug about ignoring me for the past few paragraphs I only recently discovered this myself. IF you’re going to take anything away from this drenched disaster of an experience lets make it something that’ll improve all your leather pieces, not just save this guy’s butt.
I treated it.
As in leather treated it. The cream. Not the kind your mum keeps in a tin by the sink but actual leather treatment cream I SMELL YOU scoffing at my humidity induced lack of knowledge from over fifteen hours away. I bought Denny recommended leather treatment (*insert plug here* because YA KNOW IT WAS GOOD) and rubbed it into my jacket in small circles like I was shining my favourite, holey trainers.
It absorbed straight away. Was noticeable softer within ten minutes of applying it and the discoloured patches from drying began to return to normal within minutes. I’ve since treated it three more times because now I know and my sister, Elodie, was legitimately IMPRESSED when she picked it up off our living room floor and asked “wait, when did you GET A NEW ONE?”
So to reiterate. If you get caught out and your jacket takes a dunk:
DO NOT PUT IT NEAR A RADIATOR.
If it gets wet, treat it when it dries.
We saturate our jackets with coffee spills, rainstorms, ink on our commutes across London to uninspiring office jobs and barely give them ANY of that oil back once they’re damaged or just dirty. We stuff them in at the end of the day and hope they’ll magically loofas themselves out like they did when they were twenty and fresh from the factory BUT THEY CAN’T. THEY GET OLD. STIFF. Dull.
Treat them. That’s what my Granddad did with his jackets. There’s a pair he threw over a fence when I was a kid in Wales that I’m 99% sure are still hanging on that fence twenty years later.
Do that.
So. To answer the question I’ve avoided so far;
Yes.
It’s fine. Go to town.
No its not. THROW IT ON THE FIRE.
Really it’s somewhere in between.
Rain, particularly if its a heavy downpour that you just CAN’T dodge, isn’t the end of your favourite jacket. A quick rinse won’t ruin it instantly. What will is every rainy commute you take where you give zero fucks about the care instructions because urgh DOGS WET BEDS and you hang it up at the end of the day still damp, cuffing around your house like a second skin that forgets to dry itself out because it hasn’t had the oils replaced in YEARS.
A good storm won’t ruin your leather jacket. Neglect will.
PS. Mum – it was totally fine. Honest Tyger.
