Ask a Question, Get An Answer About Outerwear

[Blackadder]

I’ve done a bit of searching for Japanese repros, but I’ve came up empty handed so far. 666 Leathers has the model Uo-Kato from Disclose wears, but no luck in the middle seam department. There’s no pictures online showing any kind of tag or brand insignia on these jackets, leaving me to blindly search “Japanese leather jacket 1970 1980 side buckle blah blah blah”, that hasn’t led me to anywhere, which is part of the reason why I made this post, I was hoping it had some kind of defined name, or if I could find somebody versed in Vintage Japanese Leather Jacket reproductions, they could point me in the right direction, this website seemed like it might have a couple of those types

I doubt you can find an exact replica with studs and all from shops. There are quite a few leather shops in Japan selling British style moto jackets. 666 is one. There are Addict and Black Means. Here is a bargain brand called Freedom that source their jackets from India or Pakistna.

https://item.rakuten.co.jp/fdm-leather/pb-2378/

https://www.leather-house.net/fs/lh1978/double/leather-jacket126

 

[RipperCrustr]

I doubt you can find an exact replica with studs and all from shops. There are quite a few leather shops in Japan selling British style moto jackets. 666 is one. There are Addict and Black Means. Here is a bargain brand called Freedom that source their jackets from India or Pakistna.

https://item.rakuten.co.jp/fdm-leather/pb-2378/

https://www.leather-house.net/fs/lh1978/double/leather-jacket126

Not looking for a replica with studs, I can do that myself (That’s part of the fun after all), just looking for the base model. Thanks for the suggestions, the links you sent are both pretty good contenders, I think if I’m going to jump through the hoops of buying from a japanese seller, it had better be of a pretty good quality, similar to the jacket in the four quadrants image I posted. If I don’t manage to find much of anything else I’ll likely settle for something of lesser quality

 

[dwilson]

Anyone have fit/inspo album for a Brakeman? Trying to determine if it’s my style and I honestly can’t tell (which may mean no.)

 

[Marc mndt]

Still can’t find a model with the back seam up the middle,

There's a similar jacket with split back listed on Vinted right now.

 

[Canuck Panda]

Saddle Soap - Has anyone used saddle soap to deep clean your leather jacket? Specifically waterproof leather jackets. What was the result? Did the saddle soap remove the waterproofing completely? Thanks.

 

[TooManyHatsOnlyOneHead]

Saddle Soap - Has anyone used saddle soap to deep clean your leather jacket? Specifically waterproof leather jackets. What was the result? Did the saddle soap remove the waterproofing completely? Thanks.

funny, I just bought some too. I'm not a scientist, but I think it will be overkill for jackets. I see it mostly for shoes that are really in the muck of things quite literally. Salt, mud, etc. Will it destroy your jacket, probably not. But you better condition afterwards, that's for sure. I bought some to clean the white soles on my Redwing moc toes.

 

[Canuck Panda]

funny, I just bought some too. I'm not a scientist, but I think it will be overkill for jackets. I see it mostly for shoes that are really in the muck of things quite literally. Salt, mud, etc. Will it destroy your jacket, probably not. But you better condition afterwards, that's for sure. I bought some to clean the white soles on my Redwing moc toes.

Yeah I am gonna go grab some from the local cobbler at lunch. I was hoping to use it to get the waterproof stuff out of the smooth and flat comp weight of the Vanson jacket I have. And turn it into gold like Torfjord's C2. Haha. I've got lots of conditioners now so that's no problem. If this works out I am getting myself an Ike jacket and Shinki / Badalassi /Victory grain it!

 

[roadking04]

I was hoping to use it to get the waterproof stuff out of the smooth and flat comp weight of the Vanson jacket I have. And turn it into gold like Torfjord's C2. Haha.

I really dont think there is any hope for the current CW from Vanson. I am pretty sure Ton took some acetone to a newer Vanson to no avail. If you can find a way to liven up CW leather, you will be a hero on this forum. lol.

Good luck and please post the results.

 

[Will Zach]

Saddle Soap - Has anyone used saddle soap to deep clean your leather jacket? Specifically waterproof leather jackets. What was the result? Did the saddle soap remove the waterproofing completely? Thanks.

Saddle soap is just some mild soap mixed with lanolin etc. A very mild cleaning agent, I doubt it will remove waterproofing (topcoat).

 

[Canuck Panda]

The potential reward is just too high. Like turning lead into gold. Got my materials and tools set up. Gonna give this a try this weekend. To be continued... I will post it in the Vanson thread.

 

[Al 916]

I would have thought the Leather is just the leather...

Cleaning the new CW won't make it the old CW.

Have fun though.

 

[jacketjunkie]

Saddle soap on a clean jacket? I don't see how that is going to turn anything into gold, only potentially damage the protectice properties of the leather. You want this jacket to look like a 30 year old vintage from ebay? Throw it into the tumbler with a bunch of tennis balls for a week and then wear it for 2 years.

 

[TREEMAN]

I really dont think there is any hope for the current CW from Vanson. I am pretty sure Ton took some acetone to a newer Vanson to no avail. If you can find a way to liven up CW leather, you will be a hero on this forum. lol.

Good luck and please post the results.

Mr frown's new Ike looks better the some i've seen lately.....I have to take a ride up there and see whats going on with CW

 

[jacketjunkie]

I own two jackets made from this supposedly inferior new competition weight leather and have yet again to strongly disagree with any supposed decline in quality.

The hides have a more even grain and smoother appearance than some of the previous CW versions. I challenge anyone to seriously claim they prefer the super uneven CW on my 2017 jacket or the plastic-ish super heavy spring-like stuff on my 2016 jacket that quite literally springs back into factory form after I take it off.

In fact, the latest CW is closest to the 90s and early 2000s super smooth CW jackets that everyone hails as the best ever - until they get to see it anyway. Or they see these old jackets broken in with 1000+ hours of wear and then seriously expect a factory-new jacket to look the same. It‘s honestly irritating. Maybe wear a jacket made of the new CW for starters, see how it breaks in and then compare it to the old stuff. If you still dislike it then, fine, agree to disagree, but I have done just that and the hide keeps getting better and better every day.

 

[Al 916]

I own two jackets made from this supposedly inferior new competition weight leather and have yet again to strongly disagree with any supposed decline in quality.

The hides have a more even grain and smoother appearance than some of the previous CW versions. I challenge anyone to seriously claim they prefer the super uneven CW on my 2017 jacket or the plastic-ish super heavy spring-like stuff on my 2016 jacket that quite literally springs back into factory form after I take it off.

In fact, the latest CW is closest to the 90s and early 2000s super smooth CW jackets that everyone hails as the best ever - until they get to see it anyway. Or they see these old jackets broken in with 1000+ hours of wear and then seriously expect a factory-new jacket to look the same. It‘s honestly irritating. Maybe wear a jacket made of the new CW for starters, see how it breaks in and then compare it to the old stuff. If you still dislike it then, fine, agree to disagree, but I have done just that and the hide keeps getting better and better every day.

I would like to see pics of these next to each other. As you have them would you please post some?

 

[jacketjunkie]

I would like to see pics of these next to each other. As you have them would you please post some?

Sure :]

First attachment (brown) is the OG vanson cw from a jacket from the late 90s.
Second attachment is CW from a Vanson Remington from the early 2000s. @torfjord 's C2 jacket he posted about the past few days is probably from this era/batch of CW. So yeah, even his great looking jacket is "not looking as it used to look"-cw from an early 2000s perspective.
Third attachment is from my 2014 America jacket.
Fourth one is from a 2018ish America jacket
Fifth one is a 2021 modern oh so terrible CW jacket.
Sixth one is the super heavy spring-like unbreakable CW from a jacket made in 2016.

As you can see, there has never been "one" competition weight hide. It's a term used for whatever hide they could source at any given time and there has always been differences. And as you can see, pic #5 is closer in resemble to the OG stuff than #2-4 and as for #6, you don't want to wear that even if you argued it looked close to #1 as well. It's all cw, it's all tough as nails hide, you may subjectively prefer one to the other, but there is no such thing as decline in quality, these differences from batch to batch have been there for decades.

 

[Al 916]

Sure :]

First attachment (brown) is the OG vanson cw from a jacket from the late 90s.
Second attachment is CW from a Vanson Remington from the early 2000s. @torfjord 's C2 jacket he posted about the past few days is probably from this era/batch of CW. So yeah, even his great looking jacket is "not looking as it used to look"-cw from an early 2000s perspective.
Third attachment is from my 2014 America jacket.
Fourth one is from a 2018ish America jacket
Fifth one is a 2021 modern oh so terrible CW jacket.
Sixth one is the super heavy spring-like unbreakable CW from a jacket made in 2016.

As you can see, there has never been "one" competition weight hide. It's a term used for whatever hide they could source at any given time and there has always been differences. And as you can see, pic #5 is closer in resemble to the OG stuff than #2-4 and as for #6, you don't want to wear that even if you argued it looked close to #1 as well. It's all cw, it's all tough as nails hide, you may subjectively prefer one to the other, but there is no such thing as decline in quality, these differences from batch to batch have been there for decades.

Terrific seeing them all together - Thank you

A question from that if I may. Where is the code to give the date on the jackets, I have some faded in a pocket liner?

And then a more open question.
I recently bathed a heavy Levi's Trucker, anyone washed/bathed CW Vanson?

 

[roadking04]

I have to take a ride up there and see whats going on with CW

If you do, please post your findings. Hopefully they have something in the works.

 

[Edward]

Ah, okay, that's a bit more precise.

Generally, when it came to leathers, punk rock band members would wear whatever motorcycle jackets available at the time that they could afford. Few brands like Lewis Leathers, Mascot, etc., are still known & famous today, with most being forgotten, as once motorcycles became affordable to the middle and even lower classes during the 1950's, many leather makers got into business of making riding clothes.

Variety in style was also negligible, with almost all 1960's to 1980's leather jackets looking so much alike that it takes only a handful of lunatics on this forum to tell them apart, but that is beside the point. . .

Looking online, Discharge wore these jackets. Unfortunately, by the look of it, the maker could've been anyone on the cheaper side of the spectrum. There really isn't anything in particular that stands out about the jacket they're wearing so I don't think think the exact ID is possible though you never know what @Edward might surprise us with.

Japanese are all about cosplay & they've taken the usual lengths to create a very good reproduction of the original, whatever it may have been.

So, to cut this short; seeing as to how it isn't very likely you'll find the exact match for this jacket & if the brand doesn't mean much to you, I'd suggest that you either look through eBay for a similar piece - Namely a vintage UK rocker / motorcycle jacket - or, if you don't want to go thru all the fuss with the sizing and that sort of thing, just grab any Lewis Leathers that fits the bill.

Alternatively, have you tried finding out who makes these repros in Japan?

Yeah, there were dozens of British leather designs back in those days, and you're absolutely right re what the punk fraternity wore. By the mid-late 70s, motorcycle-inspired leather jackets had broken the direct link between them and motorcycling, ad if you saw one it was as likely to be on a non-rider as not. Punks tended to be a touch younger than their rocker forebears of a decade or so earlier, and it was no longer the same option as once it had been to buy a bike cheaply on hire purchase and quickly and cheaply run it as regular transport. The number of people growing up around motorcycles in the UK by the late seventies had also dropped off: the advent of the (relatively) affordable British Motor car by the turn of the sixties began to kill off the motorcycle as traditional working-class man's transport, pushing it into the realm of the hobbyist and those who sought it out as a lifestyle. That had a knock on... anyhow... The short of it is that between the late 50s and the mid-late eighties when the last of the British labels (Lewis one of precious few notable exceptions) of that period began to die out, there were legion variations of the basic Lewis Lightning style. Lewis and Highwayman, direct competitors for a long time, had a lot of designs in common; Highwayman did their own version of the Lightning after Lewis launched their in 1958, while the Lewis Corsair and Dominator models came about in 1962, three to four years after Highwayman had already been selling their straight-xip / shirt collar models.

In the eighties, virtually every actual biker I can remember seeing was wearing some variant of the Lewis Monza / Super Monza style (cross zip with a mandarin collar). Variations on the Lightning style (basically the British 'Perfecto' style) were still commonly seen, though, on and off bikes. Typically the punk boys bought cheap jackets in Kensington and Camden markets, some variation of the coveted Lewis Lightning styles if they couldn't find a used one. Those who 'made it' tended then to buy a Lewis later on; half the Damned wore Lewis after they got signed, among others. Sid Vicious' Dominator, documented in other threads on here, was a second or third hand rocker original. The Clash boys bought theirs at some point after they signed to CBS, as memory serves. Steve Jones did also wear a Lewis for much of his tenure in the Pistols, though given Jonesy's well-documented sticky fingers, chances are it was never paid for.

I’ve done a bit of searching for Japanese repros, but I’ve came up empty handed so far. 666 Leathers has the model Uo-Kato from Disclose wears, but no luck in the middle seam department. There’s no pictures online showing any kind of tag or brand insignia on these jackets, leaving me to blindly search “Japanese leather jacket 1970 1980 side buckle blah blah blah”, that hasn’t led me to anywhere, which is part of the reason why I made this post, I was hoping it had some kind of defined name, or if I could find somebody versed in Vintage Japanese Leather Jacket reproductions, they could point me in the right direction, this website seemed like it might have a couple of those types

The revived Goldtop brand do have a cross-zip with a centre seam in the back, but it's not identical to the one you've pictured - the 619. The 617 is a close match on the front, but lacks just the centre-back seam. https://goldtop.co.uk/collections/jackets Goldtop do offer a "custom" option at a small upcharge (I've considered a 619 or 617 in midnight blue that way, as that's not an option they do OTR in that model), but I don't know where they draw the line on that. Not sure they'd add in a centre seam with that level of altering the pattern, though that aside the yokes are also a different shape on the one you're after.

The short answer is that it's not hard to find something nice - new or used - if what you want is something in the general style of that jacket, but if you want exact, it'll be a long hunt. If you're in the UK and near London, it's always worth a hunt through the used jacket stalls in some of the markets. Kensington market is now sadly long gone. Camden is worth the occasional mooch, but the really good stuff has been priced out since it was turned into a theme park in recent years. Portobello Road still has good stuff here and there, particularly in and around the market beside the Westway centre, at the Latimer Grove end.

Not sure if HiStar Classics are still a going concern, but they used to turn up a lot of really interesting stuff - https://www.instagram.com/histarclassics/

 

[Pandemic]

^

Great post! Very informative.

I’d love to know more about the early-80s city (Leeds and Camden, etc) market jackets. Every post-punk band you see from the era has that same jacket - basically a LL 402 in sheep or maybe thin/soft cow with the sleeve zipper on the bicep. Looks like they had a lifespan of no more than a year before falling apart.