Tall tales, small talk, and entirely useless tangents inspired by the daily wardrobe rotation

I love the leather jacket for the simple fact that it represents so many things to so many different people. It’s both a statement and a caricature; as cool as it is kitsch. It’s a style staple that enjoys so many historical, social and cultural overlaps that it’s hard to define in and of itself. Instead, the leather jacket just kind of lends itself to any given cultural zeitgeist. Biker? Punk? Leather daddy? Tail-End Charlie? Step right up, the leather jacket has you literally, and metaphorically covered.

There’s just the right amount of self-aware irony that goes along with wearing a biker jacket, too. And so there should be. If you’re not toying with those cultural overlaps and stylistic ironies in your regular wardrobe rotation then, frankly, you’re not having any fun at all. And if it ain’t any fun then what, my friends, is the point?

My 613s Perfecto is a bells and whistles biker jacket, to be sure. The belted silhouette, starred-up epaulettes, and steerhide leather lend the jacket a harder edge than most fashion-forward, Saturday-night-special alternatives. It’s a thousand mile jacket and then some. A once-Japanese exclusive made in New Jersey and purchased from Long Beach’s Snake Oil Provisions, my Perfecto was already plenty well travelled before it even reached me. But over the years, it’s become a telling roadmap of my early thirties all the same.

There are holes in the hide from pin badges lost at countless gigs and bars. There are claw marks up and down the jacket’s left forearm. They come compliments of Ralph, a dog too scared to walk on solid ground as a puppy. They chart his three-year growth from palm-sized puppy to full grown pain in my arse. There’s a little Cognac mud ground into the bi-swing back from research trips to the cellars and vineyards of Jarnac, too. The leather is beaten, pulled and pebbled from three plus years of loving abuse. It’s been stomped on, scratched up, and on more than one occasion, almost stolen. I can only imagine how it’ll look in another three years. Or in another ten, when it doubtless no longer fits an older, fatter version of myself and someone else - be that progeny or perfect stranger - decides to don it and pick up where I left off.

For all the romanticism that surrounds it, though, it’s easy to forget that the Perfecto is, in its most basic and historical application, a form of armour. Now, I don’t ride; I have little need for the physical protection that a leather jacket so often offers. But the Perfecto has served as my armour all the same; it has granted protection of a different sort over the years. It has provided me with both confidence and conversation starters in crowded rooms full of unknown faces. It has seen me unscathed through interviews, presentations, performances and a myriad of other professional obligations that have seen fit to push me a little wider of my comfort zone than I’d ever openly admit.

Sure, the Perfecto is traditionally rugged. Its very popularity stems from a well-earned reputation for being rough, tough, and built like a brick shit house. But if you want my opinion (and reading this far down is a touch perverse if you don’t), the measure of a leather jacket's worth lies not in its toughness, but in its ability to double up as the bed of a sleeping dog or, when needed, the safety blanket of a scared man.