Edward
Bartender
- Messages
- 25,078
- Location
- London, UK
Trawling eBay looking at leather jacket auctions, I chanced across this:
Not my style at all, and I do not here intend to open up a discussion on this particular jacket. Rather, it sparked in my head a question - in what colours were leather jackets made and sold during the period, roughly, 1925-1959? I have seen many leather jackets in my time that date back to the 70s in shades of bottle green or this sort of blue, but anything surviving from much earlier seems to be black, brown, or occasionally a burgundy colour. It seems to me that other options must have been possible: I grew up around vintage cars from the 30s where blue, green, bright red and many other colours of leather were common in seating. Presumably the leather used to make car seats isn't significantly differently treated than that used in the garment industry. I can well imagine that brighter leather colours would not have been especially popular back in the day, but is that to say that they were never seen? Were they simply a product of much more recent fashions - or, in a utilitarian context, more modern concepts of safety clothing, as traffic became much more common on the roads (especially as cars overtook the motorcycle as the common man's transport, and understanding of the road need of motorcycles / knowing to look for them etc diminished....)?
Funny the thoughts that occur while idly browsing the Bay.
Not my style at all, and I do not here intend to open up a discussion on this particular jacket. Rather, it sparked in my head a question - in what colours were leather jackets made and sold during the period, roughly, 1925-1959? I have seen many leather jackets in my time that date back to the 70s in shades of bottle green or this sort of blue, but anything surviving from much earlier seems to be black, brown, or occasionally a burgundy colour. It seems to me that other options must have been possible: I grew up around vintage cars from the 30s where blue, green, bright red and many other colours of leather were common in seating. Presumably the leather used to make car seats isn't significantly differently treated than that used in the garment industry. I can well imagine that brighter leather colours would not have been especially popular back in the day, but is that to say that they were never seen? Were they simply a product of much more recent fashions - or, in a utilitarian context, more modern concepts of safety clothing, as traffic became much more common on the roads (especially as cars overtook the motorcycle as the common man's transport, and understanding of the road need of motorcycles / knowing to look for them etc diminished....)?
Funny the thoughts that occur while idly browsing the Bay.
