Few garments are more enduring than the leather jacket. From 50’s greasers to Tumblr-era style icons, it’s been a uniform for musicians, bikers, and anyone looking to make a statement. Here are ten pop culture moments where a leather jacket went beyond fashion and defined a look.
Brando’s black Schott Perfecto is the leather jacket blueprint. With wide lapels, chunky zips and a tilt of his cap and a zip of the jacket, he made the biker look synonymous with rebellion – a visual cliché that still hasn’t worn out.
Beat-up leather jackets, ripped jeans, Converse: the Ramones’ uniform was pure punk minimalism. By repeating the same look on every album cover and stage appearance, they made the jacket an instantly recognizable uniform for fans.
Molly Ringwald’s Claire wasn’t exactly the stereotypical rebel, but her oversized bomber was iconic in its own way: the broad shoulders, boxy cut, and slightly slouchy fit perfectly captured the bold, exaggerated shapes of ’80s teen fashion.
The Tumblr generation’s Brangelina. Alexa’s slouchy black leather alongside Turner’s rockstar curls cemented the “festival couple” aesthetic that spawned thousands of moodboards. A paparazzi snapshot turned into the holy grail of indie sleaze fashion inspo.
Brad Pitt’s distressed red leather jacket embodies the chaos of his character. It’s flashy, broken-in, slightly absurd – the perfect costume for toxic charisma. It became shorthand for a certain brand of masculinity that the internet has meme’d, mocked, and idolized in equal measure.
Charli XCX treats leather like a uniform – cropped bikers, oversized motos, shiny vinyl. She mixes Y2K throwback with club culture, making the jacket feel current without trying too hard. Where leather used to signal rebellion, Charli just makes it fun.
Kate Moss and Johnny Depp made battered leather jackets look like a second skin. Their paparazzi shots captured something unrehearsed – baggy silhouettes, unkempt hair, and jackets that actually got lived in ived in. The anti-fashion fashion moment.
The Matrix turned leather into a uniform for digital rebellion. Those floor-length coats were absurdly impractical – but that was the point. The Wachowskis understood that cyberpunk needed weight and texture, not just black fabric. It’s costume design that became a cultural reference point, copied endlessly because it committed fully to its own excess.
Bourdain’s black leather jacket was never the main event — just a constant. Worn-in, practical, the kind of thing you throw on and forget about. It fit his aesthetic: no fuss, no performance, just someone who’d rather talk about the food than what he’s wearing.
Olivia Newton-John wore that black leather jacket for a fraction of Grease, yet it’s the look that defined the entire film. One costume change in the final act became more iconic than two hours of poodle skirts. Sometimes all it takes is the right jacket at the right moment.
The leather jacket keeps showing up because it works – practical, recognizable, and adaptable enough to mean different things depending on who’s wearing it. These ten moments capture that range, from cinema to street style, and there will undoubtedly be more to come.
Josslyn Shi from California College of Art has been crowned Overall Winner of the Real Leather. Stay Different. International Student Design Competition at a glittering final event held at the U.S. Embassy in London.
Cattle hides are by-products of the meat industry. By using them to make leather we save them from landfill.
Having previously worked for high fashion houses such as Chloé, Balenciaga and Paco Rabanne, it was actually the unsettling image of piled-up leather offcuts left unused by big name brands that inspired Paris-based designer Bea Recoder to launch Reco.
Judges have chosen the finalists in the Italian Student design competition, and the successful students now face the exciting task of making prototypes.
Now in its sixth year, Real Leather. Stay Different. returns to Taiwan—celebrating a vibrant legacy of craftsmanship and forward-thinking design. As the competition closes we look to the final event, we're excited to announce this year’s panel brings
