page_title: Leather jacket
section_title: Popularity
hierarchical_section_title: Leather jacket / Popularity
caption_attribution_description: This screenshot shows Ingrid Bergman and Gary Cooper in a romantic scene at night.
context_page_description: A leather jacket is a jacket-length coat that is usually worn on top of other apparel or item of clothing, and made from the tanned hide of various animals. The leather material is typically dyed black, or various shades of brown, but a wide range of colors is possible. Leather jackets can be designed for many purposes, and specific styles have been associated with subcultures such as greasers, rednecks, cowboys, motorcyclists, military aviators, mobsters, police, secret agents, and music subcultures, who have worn the garment for protective or fashionable reasons, and occasionally to create a potentially intimidating appearance.
  Most modern leather jackets are produced in Pakistan, India, Canada, Mexico and the United States, using hides left over from the meat industry. Fabrics simulating leather such as polyurethane or PVC are used as alternatives to authentic animal hide leather depending on the needs of the wearer such as those pursuing vegan lifestyles or for economic reasons as synthetic fibers tend to be less costly than authentic leather.
context_section_description: In the latter half of the 20th century, the leather jacket—in many forms—achieved iconic status and general acceptance through an inextricable link to Hollywood. Such jackets were popularized by numerous stars in the 1940s and 1950s, including actor Jimmy Stewart in the film Night Passage (1957), who had actually commanded a U.S. bomber squadron during World War II. The brown leather jacket has become a de rigueur part of wardrobe for the Hollywood adventurer, from Gary Cooper in For Whom the Bell Tolls to Harrison Ford in the Indiana Jones film series.
  A leather jacket could be used to shape a character, providing an important ingredient used to define the very essence of 'cool'. Prime examples include the Perfecto motorcycle jacket worn by Marlon Brando's Johnny Strabler in The Wild One (1953), Honor Blackman as Cathy Gale on The Avengers, and Michael Pare in Eddie and the Cruisers duo (1983 and 1989). As such, these all served to popularize leather jackets in American youth from the "greaser subculture" of the 1950s and early 1960s. Later depictions of this subculture are seen via The Fonz from the television series Happy Days, which was produced in the 1970s and 1980s, but shows life in the 1950s and 1960s (Fonzie's leather jacket is now housed in the Smithsonian Institution), and in the film duos Eddie and the Cruisers and Grease. Flight jackets, also (occasionally with fleece collars, as seen in the film Top Gun (1986), have remained fashionable for decades.
caption: American actor Gary Cooper wore a leather jacket in his role as an International Brigades guerrilla fighter in the Spanish Civil War in For Whom the Bell Tolls
exif: {}