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Vintage Photos of Leather Jackets

2jakes

I'll Lock Up
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Alamo Heights ☀️ Texas
Langley Field : 1942

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May 1942. "Here's our mission."

A combat crew receives final instructions just before taking off in a YB-17 bomber
from the bombardment squadron base at Langley Field, Virginia.
(4x5 Kodachrome by Alfred Palmer - Office of War Information.)


www.shorpy.com/
 
D

Deleted member 16736

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Great! Love those high trousers with short jacket look! :)

That's what stands out the most to me. Modern jacket reproductions are too long in the body. I need longer pants and a shorter jacket!
 

Sloan1874

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8,427
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Glasgow
I had a 50s West German army jacket at uni. It was extremely cool, a sort of prussian blue peacoat, but it was so old that it was already beginning to fall to pieces when I got - not unlike the one in the pic - and sadly by the end of my fourth year, it wasn't really fit for anything but the bin.
 

oneterrifichog

Practically Family
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878
Location
Alexandria, Va
In the 1954 issue of cycle magazine there is a mail order ad for a Trojan horsehide motorcycle jacket. It's priced at $34.95. During the same year average income was $2300
http://news.google.com/newspapers?n...EIaAAAAIBAJ&sjid=hyMEAAAAIBAJ&pg=3044,5950263
Lets round that to the jacket being a 66th of annual income.

A Lost Worlds Trojan today costs $1250
http://www.lostworldsinc.com/Leather_Motorcycle_Jacket_Trojan_Horsehide.htm
Average gross income is $47000 so a jacket is a 38th.
So, circa 74% more expensive today for the same jacket.

Other jackets though, for example the Alexander Roadster HH, are selling for between £300 and £500 GBP, which possibly makes them the same or cheaper than past eras.

Sorry got sidetracked by some of those interesting articles in the Times News in Hendersonville, NC 1955 edition mentioned above. I asked my daughter to read a few of them as well so she could really get a feel for the "innocent ignorance" of the period as well as the outright racism of using African American Women from a Mental Hospital to pick cotton. I say this because this is not political but real history.

Wilbur
 

Seb Lucas

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Australia
Wilbur, I think you can safely say that real history is political and that's okay.


That photo above is extraordinarily vivid.
 
Last edited:

pipvh

Practically Family
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644
Location
England
So much to love in this photo. The jackets, the different cultures and the color of old film.

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Are those Free French pilots? Something about the gloves and scarf - and the pin-on wings... But did French flyers wear A2s?
 

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