Icon in Leather Jacket

Real Icons Wear Leather

When I had somewhere important to be, I always reached for a leather jacket.

One piece of outerwear and you're out the door, no thinking required. To me it's the only item that looks good without asking anything of you.

Something that drew me to someone I've fallen for lately: he wears leather boots year-round, no matter the season. A person who keeps leather boots on through summer is choosing a little friction over comfort, and I find that, well, sexy.

©pinterest.com

Clothes tell you a lot about a person. How a person lives and what they love tends to show up in a single garment. When I hear "leather jacket," the first person I picture isn't from fashion at all. It's Jensen Huang. If you follow the stock market even a little, you already know him, Nvidia's CEO. The one who takes the stage in a black leather jacket every single time.

A Tom Ford leather jacket worn by Jensen Huang up for auction at Sotheby's. ©@businessbulls.in, ©@bankers

One of his Tom Ford jackets recently went to auction and put him back in the conversation. He's worn leather at official appearances since 2013, enough that he once joked you probably know him better as "the guy in the leather jacket who says everything three times." Type "Jensen Huang" into Google and "leather jacket" fills itself in. It’s basically part of him at this point.

That's the appeal of leather: it keeps a record of whoever's wearing it. It creases where your body moves, and the shine and grain shift over the years. New versions land every season, and it stays a classic anyway. Here are four people who wore that classic entirely their own way.

The Woman You Want to Copy: Kate Moss

Search "leather jacket aesthetic" on Pinterest and Kate Moss is the first face up. Her leather looks from those 90s paparazzi shots are still getting passed around. And the thing is, the way she wears it is nothing clever. A leather jacket over a long tee or a slip dress, or thrown on with old denim. That's the whole trick.

©vogue.co.kr

Part of it is that she's a model and anything lands on that frame, sure. But it’s also that, to her, a leather jacket isn't something you "style." It's just on. A jacket broken in from years of wear, hair a little undone, everything slightly creased. That ease is what finishes the look, the not-quite-put-together version suits leather's rough texture better than any polished one would.

©pinterest

 

Put her leather photos together and you basically have the entire field. Blousons to tailored coats. Loud red to plain black. High-shine leather to suede. She never wore it to keep up with anything, she wore it in a way that makes you notice the jacket itself again. That's why the looks still land decades later.

 

ⓒPINTEREST, ⓒGETTY IMAGES

 

If the standard black leather jacket has stopped doing anything for you, take Moss as your cue and go for other colors and materials. FW26 had plenty, each house with its own read on it. A CELINE jacket in orange with a bold detail across the back, a cleanly cut LOEWE piece in sky blue, ISABEL MARANT's red leather over a denim mini. The only thing left to figure out is which one you're bringing home.

 

CELINE FW26 ©vogue.comLOEWE FW26, BOTTEGA VENETA FW26 ©vogue.comISABEL MARANT FW26, VALENTINO FW26 ©vogue.com

The Hedi Slimane Slim Leather Jacket

 

You cannot talk about leather jackets and skip Hedi Slimane. It would be a crime.

 

©marieclaire.co.uk

 

Dior Homme, then Saint Laurent, then Celine. The world he built as a designer was all gaunt boys with a decadent edge, musicians with guitars on their backs, Paris and London at night, and the black leather jacket running through all of it. His slim-cut leather jacket is the piece that took rock's whole rebellious posture and made it wearable.

 

SAINT LAURENT FW25 ©@archivepdfCELINE SS19 ©anothermanmag.com, ©fashionsnap.com

 

It started with music, and with a camera. He fell for the rock scene as a teenager after hearing David Bowie's David Live, and that energy runs through everything he's made since. Photography actually came before fashion, he had his first camera at eleven, and he went on to shoot Iggy Pop, The Libertines, Daft Punk, more musicians than you could list.

 

A photo from Slimane's archive book The Diary of Hedi Slimane ©@hedislimane

 

His photo book The Diary of Hedi Slimane is page after page of black-and-white from the rock scenes of Britain, Europe, and the US. The light, the framing, the movement on stage. He treated rock as an attitude toward living rather than a genre, and he's the designer who put that attitude into clothes.

So of course his leather jackets ended up in real musicians' closets. Julian Casablancas, Jack White, Lou Reed, then Gus Dapperton, The Hellp, Yves Tumor. Generations apart, all reaching for the same thing.

 

©@samutaro

 

Rock's attitude meeting Slimane's sharp line. That slim leather jacket stopped being just an item and became a uniform for the whole rock spirit, and it turned up again all over FW26.

 

TOM FORD FW26, ANN DEMEULMEESTER FW26 ©vogue.comBALENCIAGA FW26, R13 FW26 ©vogue.com

 

It probably wasn't the leather itself he loved. It was the confidence you put on with it.

 

Leather This Futuristic: Daft Punk

 

For them, the leather jacket wasn't a choice, it was the identity. This is Daft Punk, the French electronic duo who worked with Hedi Slimane for years.

 

A Dior Homme leather jacket Slimane customized for Daft Punk, 2006 ©**@la.archives**

 

Slimane narrowed the male silhouette until it became a new kind of masculinity. Daft Punk hid their faces behind robot helmets and built an entire image out of never showing them. Different fields, fashion and music, but they were chasing the same thing through art: minimal but futuristic, cold but intense.

The two go back to the early 2000s. Slimane made custom stage wear for them at Dior Homme, and they kept working together across music and fashion long after he left the house.

 

ⓒ@streetfits.1

 

Two people who covered their faces and still left a sharper image than almost anyone. For Daft Punk, leather went past styling. It was the strongest language they had for making visible a world the music alone couldn't.

 

ⓒ@streetfits.1

Just Put a Leather Jacket On Top: The Rei Kawakubo Way

 

Rei Kawakubo, who runs COMME des GARÇONS. First things that come to mind: the blunt bob, and black. And one more that can't be left off the list, the leather jacket.

 

©businessoffashion.com

 

The leather jacket she wears has nothing to do with chasing trends. Follow how she's dressed over the years and it starts to read like part of her aesthetic itself. Black, leather, a silhouette with nothing spare on it. Every one of those is something she's built her work around.

 

©@benjaminkwanphoto, ©refinery29.com

 

There's a formula to it. Black leather biker, long skirt or trousers, a shirt in the mix, sunglasses and jewelry to close it. So "Kawakubo style = a leather jacket over whatever else you've got on" isn't much of a stretch. It never looks especially done, and the repetition is exactly what makes the image so strong. VOGUE has called the biker-and-long-skirt combination her uniform.

 

The leather jacket that's been Kawakubo's trademark since she was young.©anothermag.com, A leather piece that turns up often in her protégé Junya Watanabe's collections. JUNYA WATANABE FW26 ©vogue.com

 

She's a designer, so clothes to her are closer to a daily uniform than to anything meant to stand out. (A lot of designers dress plainer than you'd guess.) Which is why the same black, the same jacket, on repeat, never gets dull. Maybe clothes don't explain a person so much as what you choose over and over becomes your style. If you're stuck on how to brand yourself, hers is a method worth studying.

 

©@stefanogallici

 

The item that seals an iconic look: the leather jacket.

I'm still out here looking for the one that'll live in my closet for years. Classic bikers, newer silhouettes, all kinds of details, jente has the options. Here's hoping you find yours for the fall and winter.

Editor: Kim Nayoung