Vintage Photos of Leather Jackets

[2jakes]

Langley Field : 1942

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/

 

[2jakes]

1942 Life Magazine

Margaret Bourke-White

Pep talk: Before taking off on a mission, a Flying Fortress crew in England receives
a talk from 26-year-old Chaplain James O. Kincannon, Van Bueren, Arkansas,
minister affectionately known as 'Chaplain Jim'

 

[Dinerman]

 

[Dickie Teenie]

Lucius P. Dawkins on his HRD-Vincent Series B Touring Rapide ca.1949; I've never seen an ID of his friend with the cool Knucklehead 'bob-job'.

 

[Two Types]

Bonar Colleano in Dance Hall (1950)

 

[Fastuni]

Double breasted leather jacket (one of those often referred to as ¨Luftwaffe¨-type) worn by crew member of German tourist ship ¨Milwaukee¨.
Norway, 1936-1939:

http://www.deutschefotothek.de/documents/obj/71218072/df_hauptkatalog_0212699_044

More on this source: http://www.thefedoralounge.com/showthread.php?77636-Superb-Photos-of-30-s-Tourism-by-Franz-Grasser

 

[buler]

 

[Flat Foot Floey]

 

[Fastuni]

Great! Love those high trousers with short jacket look!

 

[Deleted member 16736]

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!

 

[herringbonekid]

 

[Sloan1874]

That guy's jacket is surfing the fine line between 'patina' and 'knackered'

 

[Doctor Damage]

That guy's jacket is surfing the fine line between 'patina' and 'knackered'

No, it's over the line by a country mile!

 

[Dumpster Diver]

Looks like one of mine, and its doing fine.

 

[Sloan1874]

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.

 

[devilish]

 

[devilish]

So much to love in this photo. The jackets, the different cultures and the color of old film.

 

[oneterrifichog]

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]

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


That photo above is extraordinarily vivid.

 

[pipvh]

So much to love in this photo. The jackets, the different cultures and the color of old film.

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