I have fond memories of certain headshop in Sheffield that helped me through my adolescence. I often used to go in there, and after browsing the vinyl LPs and sniffing the packets of incence I would look through the second-hand leather jackets, trying one on occasionally as a kind of rebel fantasy. But one day I found with one that fitted me so perfectly, there was no way I could leave the shop without it.
Made of thick, tough leather, it had a red quilted lining and the faint remains of some writing on the back which the previous owner had applied and the shop had removed (almost). I didn’t care – at least it was worn in.
I lived in the jacket from the years 17-19; as a young musician, it was a statement of who I was and what I was into. When I walked through the everyday world, my culture went with me.
The good thing about a biker jacket (a proper one, not some flimsy fashion shit), is that they’re fucking warm when you need them to be. These garments are made to keep out 100mph windchill, so crashing without bedding on friends’ sofas in winter was never a problem. In summertime, only a 30-degree heat would persuade me to shed my leather layer, so essential had it become.
Occasionally I would feel gratitude towards the long-dead cow which had enabled me to create a satisfactory self; at that uncertain age, the acquisition of black leather was a step up, a graduation into a cooler world.
Would I dress that way again, I sometimes ask myself? Never before or since have I been so simultaneously reinforced and reinvented by a piece of clothing. Of course, it was an era that had to pass.
As time went on I began to feel that my look was creating preconceptions in people. This was before youth dress codes had become meaningless commodified style; to feeble minds back then, a biker jacket combined with straggly hair still evoked memories of battles between mods and rockers on Brighton seafront. I wanted to smile at old ladies but they weren’t letting me. Besides, I was no longer running with nihilistic stoners and the symbolic transgression of black leather just wasn’t me any more.
I sold my jacket to a mate, and felt jealous seeing them together for a year afterwards.
Tom George 
Leather biker jacket still in the coat cupboard – still just about fitting my 50 year old frame, but not worn out much. It occasionally gets looked at by my 18 year old son, but he is so tall it would look ridiculous. Good post.
Ha ha…I am now wearing a denim jacket that is getting towards that beaten up stage, Erich! Thanks for the comment x
Thanks for the lovely memory-piece, Tom. Made me think of this beat-up denim jacket that I picked up in a second-hand shop in Provincetown, Massachusetts many, many years ago. It was so perfectly worn and ragged and had several suspicious-looking holes in the sleeves. I told myself they were bullet-holes and evidence that the jacket had been into some serious shit back in the day. But I suspect that the holes were probably just made by some hungry moths. Time went by . . . I got older . . . good sense prevailed . . . and the bullet-riddled denim jacket, alas, is no more.