History of the "Cafe Racer" jacket.

[Carlos840]

Found em, or at least something similar (bubble goggle):

 

[lina]

So I think where we're at at this point is:

-- The short cut, minimal pocketed, collarless or Mandarin/Nehru/Cadet collar jacket (and we see in the wonderful Bates ad above that they distinguish between collarless and Mandarin) has its root clearly in racing. Maybe originally with the double-breasted, two-button-rows Leathertogs, etc from as far back as the 19-teens and 1920s, then into the full leather racing suits and eventually the two piece leather "suits" (racing shirt and britches) that we see in the 1950s Buco, Brooks, Bates, etc. It's easy to see the functionality of all these features for racing.
-- At some point, we begin to have crossover of this style of jacket/shirt from racing to street riding. Not hard to see how and why that would happen. Street riders are always interested in imitating racers, both with regard to motorcycle performance and style. The question is when it happens. The first real period photos I've seen that show it in any widespread way, for style rather than practical racing needs, is in those Danny Lyon pics I posted above. It's the early/mid 1960s in the midwest and those dudes are clearly feeling badass in their Brooks, etc. And rightfully so! But I think the ads from Buco and Brooks and Bates, all early to mid 1950s show that even though they are still calling them "racing shirts" and "competition shirts" they are also being marketed to weekend road warriors. I still kind of like my earlier idea of a regional midwest location for this emergence of the style, but not sure it will hold up. Will need more evidence..
-- Now, the main question that still is out there resisting our efforts to figure it out is: When does this race inspired style, which has become a moto fashion by the 50s or 60s, come to be called a "Cafe Racer" jacket? Seems by all accounts relatively late, with people remembering them from the 90s, maybe the 80s. But I think what we need are catalogues, magazines, or something that shows the name being used. We may not be able to pin it down precisely of course, but we ought to be able to get closer...

 

[Superfluous]

Fantastic information is this thread -- my compliments to the invaluable contributions from many different members, including @lina in particular.

Regardless of the name attributed to the jacket -- "a rose by any other name . . ." -- one thing is abundantly clear: the popularity of the Cafe Racer style jacket is not a recent phenomenon. To the contrary, CR jackets have been popular and widely worn since the 1960s, and by the early 1970s, they were firmly entrenched in motorcycle and leather jacket culture. "Brimaco was making 2000 of them a week in the early seventies." Thats a lot of jackets. The CR style certainly is not recent fad or passing trend.

 

[navetsea]

but were they seen as gear or part of everyday outfit in those days? do they wear it when they walk to nearby store, or do they only wear it when they take their bike out.
I think the popularity of mandarin collared jacket as part of just casual outfit is more recent than MC jacket.

probably very recently adopted, TV is a good barometer of trendy style, you don't see any 90's movie or tv series with character wearing a cafe racer jacket without the character being a biker. MC jacket or bomber jacket is more earlier adopted as mainstream jacket than this band collared cousin.
Heck, probably Tom Cruise in War of The World was the first non biker character who wore it on screen

 

[zebedee]

It would be interesting to locate the individual/shift-point. A bit like German army shirts' sudden popularity as fashion items when (vanished) bands like the Levellers started wearing them and suddenly they were a youth item. Workwear in general seems to have done this, too.

 

[antoine p]

Various styles in a few late 90s- early 2000s films, as far as I can remember none of these characters speak about or ride a motorcycle.

Buffalo '66 (1998)

Fight Club (1999)

Minority Report (2002)

 

[navetsea]

wow i didn't remember Brad pitt charcter in fight club wear that jacket, I remember more of his car coat

 

[Monitor]

Of the older movies than the ones above, The Mechanic (1972) comes to mind... Fidelity, if I'm not mistaken?

And Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) - NSFW, I suppose - The only decent picture of the jacket is on a guy that's been hanged so warning of a sort if you don't particularly enjoy seeing stuff like that...
https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/d64...355f4a5ad1eb265a0-17-elm-street-5.2x.w512.jpg
Can anyone please remind me of the makers name??? My brain is refusing to cooperate. Top sleeve zippers, full action back, like Brooks. Ugh, what was the name... Not Beck, not Passaic... That other maker.

 

[Seb Lucas]

Of the older movies than the ones above, The Mechanic (1972) comes to mind... Fidelity, if I'm not mistaken?

And Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) - NSFW, I suppose - The only decent picture of the jacket is on a guy that's been hanged so warning of a sort if you don't particularly enjoy seeing stuff like that...
https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/d64...355f4a5ad1eb265a0-17-elm-street-5.2x.w512.jpg
Can anyone please remind me of the makers name??? My brain is refusing to cooperate. Top sleeve zippers, full action back, like Brooks. Ugh, what was the name... Not Beck, not Passaic... That other maker.

Beau Breed - I have one of these in my closet in near mint condition. Thin leather, quilted lining. I never wear it - the shoulders are really wide - as you can see in the shot above. The Brooks is a better jacket IMO.

There's no doubt that cafe racers were a thing for years but as general street wear they were barely seen in this town until 2000. The first ones I really liked was the J100 and Brooks version which was so memorably worn by Denis Leary in Rescue Me.

 

[Monitor]

Beau Breed - I have one of these in my closet in near mint condition. Thin leather, quilted lining. I never wear it - the shoulders are really wide - as you can see in the shot above. The Brooks is a better jacket IMO.

There's no doubt that cafe racers were a thing for years but as general street wear they were barely seen in this town until 2000. The first ones I really liked was the J100 and Brooks version which was so memorably worn by Denis Leary in Rescue Me.

Yes! Beau Breed. Thank you. That's it.

And yeah, the CR's were always around, just that they didn't stand for much prior to becoming truly popular during the 2000's. Most companies were producing a lot of them during the 70's because they were good motorcycle jackets but that's it.

 

[navetsea]

charles bronson not included since everybody who met him died leaving no witness

 

[Edward]

Incidentally did they become popular in the 70s from the ground up or because the manufacturers liked making them? Many one piece race leathers of the era had external pockets as well as mandarin collars and a waist seam so that type of jacket was essentially already half a one piece suit. Production simplification, less patterns and presumably an option to convert one into the other if they had overstock. Also they use less leather than a lancer or cross zip jacket and less again than a flip collar one.

Definitely advantageous to the maker. I remember also them being big in fashion in the 90s for ladies here (long before the recent cross-zip fashion fad came back round) - likely a similar, cost-saving issue for fast-fashion turnaround.

Interesting that they predate the 60s, which is what I'd always associated as their genesis as we know them now. Seems they were popular in a small niche, though.

If a rider need a lunging position over the tank would then center vertical zip more prone to bubble out especially if the pattern is not skin tight and the zipper is made of chunky metal and the jacket is long as typical cafe/ board/ moto racer jacket?I think cross zip sans belt buckle is a more logical to bend over fuel tank both for the zip not scratching the tank and it is much easier to make it bent smoothly and not making bubble on the stomach or chest if the zipper is diagonal.

Of course 1 piece racing suit is center zip, but they are skin tight and the zipper teeth is probably designed for extra flexibility different from the usual metal zipper we have.

In theory, yes - that wouyld have a lot to do with the design of a jacket like the Lightning or the Monza / SuperMonza. In practice, though, the ton-up boys were much more likely to prefer a straight-zip. Fashion, eh?

Good questions on the hat - not quite sure what that would be, but some type of white and brimmed hat for sure. The sunglasses appear like a folding style?

Carlos is right - it's an old-style open-face helmet, with a solid, one-piece peak clipped onto the three stud-fasteners that those typically had. Also often used to clip on a visor over the front before full-face helmets started to become a norm on the roads.... here in the UK, that was, I believe, mostly after the compulsory helmet law came in in '73 (by which time 80% of riders were wearing them).

Regardless of the name attributed to the jacket -- "a rose by any other name . . ." -- one thing is abundantly clear: the popularity of the Cafe Racer style jacket is not a recent phenomenon. To the contrary, CR jackets have been popular and widely worn since the 1960s, and by the early 1970s, they were firmly entrenched in motorcycle and leather jacket culture. "Brimaco was making 2000 of them a week in the early seventies." Thats a lot of jackets. The CR style certainly is not recent fad or passing trend.

I often wonder whether part of it was with the rise of American-style MCs. Certainly they were a minority, but a big enough minortiy to cause a trend in bike jackets. It seems much more common to see guys like there here wearing a 'cafe racer' style jacket under their colours. Never worn colours over a leather myself, but I rather suspect over a cafe racer rather than a lancer front would be an easier way to wear them. If a Club preferred colours vests with a collar on it, that would also wear more easily with a jacket that didn't have more than the Mandarin collar below it.

Maybe some who considered themselves "real bikers", MC or otherwise, got it into their heads that the Brando-style had become a bit naff with itsrise in non-biker wear, it's use as a lazy, Hollywood-shorthand for a laughably emasculated "bad boy" stereotype....

Conversely, given how potent a symbol the black leather jacket was by the 70s (Fonzie was only allowed to wear leather after the end of the first season.... and even then it had to be brown, and only worn when in the vicinity of his motorcycle - all rules imposed by the network!), maybe many opted for this toned down version as 'safer'?

It would be interesting to locate the individual/shift-point. A bit like German army shirts' sudden popularity as fashion items when (vanished) bands like the Levellers started wearing them and suddenly they were a youth item. Workwear in general seems to have done this, too.

THough remember the thing with Army surplus is that it inevitably has a shelf-life which is further limited by becoming fashionable... By the time you see large stocks of it in surplus stores, it is typically already ten years or more since it was last issued. At least in the UK, for the most part, that was my experience.

wow i didn't remember Brad pitt charcter in fight club wear that jacket, I remember more of his car coat

IT's only worn in that one scene where they walk down the line of parked cars, smashing the headlamps. Cool jacket, wanted one like it for years but it would never go with what I wear now.

 

[lina]

Good stuff! @antoine p and @Monitor those movie pics are great. All the characters represent some form of counter-mainstream bad boys, with of course Bronson as the ultimate (cool but dangerous) bad boy. Of course, leather jackets stereotypically represent that in pop culture, so no big surprise. But the CR-style seems to represent a non-"biker" version of it. That is, in the US, the bigger, Brando style MC jacket is associated with "biker" cutlure -- Harleys and other big cruisers, beards and beer and gangs. So I think the CR-style might have come in as a non-Harley leather jacket, that has some moto-cool background but not exactly "biker."

The Bronson version in 1972 seems very early indeed for this. I think almost no one would have been wearing that jacket off of a motorcycle at that point, though I don't know for sure. And even in the 1990s, I still think the jacket as unusual enough for normal, everyday wear that it would signify "bad boy" for Gallo's and Pitt's characters.

The question remains, How did it get associated with "cafe racers"? I am going to tentatively posit that the style evolved -- outside of racing, where it was always present -- parallel to the the cross-zip "biker" jacket. It became an alternative to that more obvious biker look, a little less in-your-face and a little cooler, but still associated with motorcycles. And somehow at some point that non-Harley moto aesthetic got associated with the main emerging non-Harley moto culture, the Cafe Racer. The latter in fact began to re-emerge in the early 90s, with the 1994 reunion of "rockers" at the old Ace Cafe in north London an apparent turning point. This is all speculative, but trying to take account of the evidence...

 

[lina]

@Edward and I posted simultaneously, but I think moving in the same direction...

Still looking for the earliest ad or reference to "cafe racer"...

 

[handymike]

There are some great jackets posted in this old thread:
https://www.thefedoralounge.com/threads/vintage-cafe-racer-jackets.37219/

 

[Will Zach]

Of the older movies than the ones above, The Mechanic (1972) comes to mind... Fidelity, if I'm not mistaken?

And Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) - NSFW, I suppose - The only decent picture of the jacket is on a guy that's been hanged so warning of a sort if you don't particularly enjoy seeing stuff like that...
https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/d64...355f4a5ad1eb265a0-17-elm-street-5.2x.w512.jpg
Can anyone please remind me of the makers name??? My brain is refusing to cooperate. Top sleeve zippers, full action back, like Brooks. Ugh, what was the name... Not Beck, not Passaic... That other maker.

Good fit on the hanging guy.

 

[handymike]

The earliest internet post I could find using the term is from 2006, but the “spin” about the name was already in place...

https://forums.vintagefashionguild.org/threads/definition-of-a-cafe-racer-jacket-pics-added.13022/

That was also the year of MI 3: the first movie where the Cruise character wore the CR style.

Edit- I found a 2005 post on the Schott forum using the term.

 

[handymike]

In Harley catalogs it went from...

1968- Cycle Shirt:

1972- Apache:

1979- Buckaroo Shirt:

1985- Invader Jacket:

1991- Cafe™ Jacket:

1992- Cafe™ Jacket:

1996- Competition Jacket:

1999-2000: Basic Rider Jacket:

 

[lina]

^Surprised “buckaroo jacket” didn’t stick!

 

[lina]

Great catalogue history work by @handymike. I think Himel was right that this sort of stuff is what will give us the answer (if it is to be found).

I am reminded that at the beginning of this thread @HoosierDaddy remembered buying a "Cafe MC" jacket back in the early 70s, but that it was not called a "cafe racer." These HD catalogue pages make me wonder if there was a US usage of "cafe jacket" much earlier than the term "cafe racer jacket," which was perhaps unconnected to the "cafe/kaff racers" from the UK.

I have always thought it unlikely that "cafe racer" would arise twice independently, that is unlikely that the jacket designation was unrelated to the bikes and folks who rode them. But now I wonder if "cafe jacket" in the US (perhaps as far back as the 1970s?) was unrelated to "kaff racers," and that it developed independently as a term for a lightweight, racing-inspired but now casual moto jacket. Then, once the original "kaff racer" movement hits, and the revival begins in the 90s and into the 2000s (that's when city riders start in earnest to return to cafe racer motorcycles -- Triumph reintroduced the Thruxton in 2004), the two terms get collapsed, so the "cafe jacket" now gets conflated with the "cafe racer" bikes and we get the "cafe racer jacket"?

Still speculating... Hoping for more hard evidence...