I owned a biker jacket for four years before I admitted the leather was actually pleather, and it told on me properly the first time it rained in Manchester. It went stiff at the elbows and smelled faintly of a garden hose. That’s the whole lesson really, the difference between a good biker jacket and a bad one is entirely in what happens to it in weather, on public transport, after the fortieth time you’ve shrugged it on without thinking.
A proper one has weight to it. Not stiff, weight. It should feel like it’s already been somewhere before you’ve bought it, with a collar that sits up without needing to be told to and zips that don’t catch on the lining every single time, because mine did, for years, and I just accepted it as a personality trait of the jacket rather than a design flaw.
The good ones soften at the elbows and cuffs in a way that looks earned rather than distressed on purpose in a factory.
Styling one is less complicated than people make it.
Over a slip dress it does the thing a cardigan can’t, adds edge instead of cosying things up, which is why it’s the one piece that can rescue an outfit that’s gone a bit too polite. With straight leg jeans and a plain top it’s basically a uniform, and a good one. My colleague Priya calls hers “the jacket that makes me look like I have my life together,” which, fair, it does that work on a Tuesday when nothing else in your outfit is trying.
It’s brilliant for the in between moments, the dinner that starts smart and ends up somewhere louder, the daytime wedding where you need a layer that isn’t a blazer, the entire month of March when nobody, meteorologically, can be trusted. It doesn’t ask you to dress up or down around it, it just sits there looking like it knows something you don’t.
I still think about that pleather one sometimes. Not fondly. But it taught me to check the inside of the collar before anything else, because that’s where a jacket tells you the truth about itself.
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