Everything has a history ... even fashion items.
1. Invented by Irving Schott in 1928, the first leather biker jacket was named the Perfecto and bore the label Schott Bros.
2. The Perfecto retailed for a measly 20 dirhams when it came out about 90 years ago.
Today, you can still buy the exact same design, crafted using the very same machines that made the first ones, for about 2,800 dirhams. That comes down to a 5.8 percent annual inflation rate!
3. Despite becoming a must-have piece among today’s style set, it was made to be as functional as it is fashionable.
The snug fit of the jacket shielded riders against elements and featured lapels designed to snap down or fold over each other and zip all the way up. The diagonal zipper was purely meant for function over form. The angle of the closure worked to block the wind and prevented the jacket from bunching up when the rider mounted his bike.
4. Schott was the first person ever to put zippers on an article of clothing.
Zippers were an important element of the biker jacket – they were incorporated into the design to prevent belongings from falling out of pockets while riding.
5. While black is the color we associate with biker jackets the most, brown Perfectos dominated first 20-odd years of the style’s existence.
It took up until the 1950s for the black version of the garment to really take off.
6. Marlon Brando, in his 1953 film "The Wild One," shot the biker to silver screen fame and cemented its status as an essential item in every man’s wardrobe to this day.
7. You may think it gives you a bad boy appeal now, but the Schott never intended for the biker to have such a reputation.
It was the characters that popularized the style in cinema and pop culture – James Dean, Bruce Springsteen, The Ramones – together with the American greasers and British rockets, that established the longstanding notion.
8. Yves Saint Laurent was the first designer to create its haute couture interpretation of the biker, debuting an alligator piece for Christian Dior in 1960.
It was a bold move and management hated it.
9. A Harley-Davidson number signed by Pope Francis fetched about 285,000 dirhams at a charity auction.
10. Michael Jackson is probably the most iconic version of the jacket in all of history – except it looks nothing like a real biker jacket.
It sold for more than 6 million dirhams in 2011.
Enjoy our weekly installment of Fashion Chameleon, a men’s fashion and lifestyle blog written by Jim Joquico the founder of La Moda Dubai. Read previous posts here .