AUTOMOTIVE CLOTHING: WHEREIN A FINE ARTIST ENVISIONS THE BOMBER JACKET AS A WAY TO PROMOTE HIS AUTOMOTIVE PORTRAITS
When I was a kid in Michigan, there were still plenty of WWII veterans out and about, and more recently Korean war vets.
A lot of them, and their sons, on weekends in winter, sported fighter jackets, also sometimes called bomber jackets
I am nominating that classic two front pocket style as the model for the perfect sports car/hot rod jacket. I am talking waist length only, no longer. For a long time they were called "Eisenhower" jackets, as Ike wore those often in Europe during the war in Europe.
Why am I nominating this jacket? Because, other than a blue cotton denim jacket, no other casual jacket carries such a huge weight of tradition behind it. The style actually goes back to WWI.
I found out about their desirability in Malibu where I occasionally attend an early morning Cars 'N Coffee. Now Malibu has some highly unusual demographics. Like only 13,000 residents but on weekends maybe 50,000 visitors.
Plus every home is worth one million. And the most expensive is up around $150 million (though you might call Cher’s beachside digs a “compound” since there are several houses behind the 12-foot walls)
And yet, at these cars and coffee car shows, which usually began at sparrow’s fart, say, 7 am, what do you see locals wearing? Denim jackets, the kind that can be found for $5 at a swap meet and leather jackets that it look like the one that granpa wore over in Korea on those bombing runs.
What these rich swells like to do is “dress down” in the morning so no one suspects that they are the guy in that new Netflix series or that they could buy that battered Rolex you’re carrying with pocket change. And it’s almost laughable how tattered a leather jacket they want. They not only want leather but "distressed" leather. Nothing is worse to them than wearing a jacket that looks like you just bought it yesterday.
And the style leader for this movement is none other than that ultimate taste arbiter of car collecting, Ralph Lauren. Nobody can question Ralphs taste in cars--in Ferraris for instance, he owns the most desirable of all, a 250GTO. In clothing, he’s been a master arbeiter of taste for the last 50 years. He’s been wrong on some trends (sorry, Ralph, nobody’s worn pin collars for 30 years) but on the distressed leather bombers, I gotta say he's right on. He’s found a way to make them look like they’ve been worn every day for 40 years (except for pristine linings and cuffs) and that’s pretty hard to imagine when the guy wearing them is some 20 year old Junior from Pepperdine Malibu.
THE REAL JACKETS
Why not just collect the real ones? The war-time ones with the military insignias? One problem is that the real ones were usually cowhide, and to me that's a hard surfaced material, not warm and friendly. I prefer ultimately lambskin. Some kind of soft leather. And the color? I am betting most military ones were brown, so I’ve been collecting jackets that are brown, all shades of brown (except light tan) but definitely not black, which I identify (if they have lots of zippers) with Marlon Brando in The Wild Ones. And if they're really long and black, well, we all know who wore full length black leather coats in WWII. Definitely not the good guys....
And of course an original bomber jacket might have a nametag attached. It’s almost sacrilegious to remove the nametag of someone who earned that jacket while serving. And the patches, now I haven’t figured out if the patches on Ralph's pseudo-military jackets are real military patches or not. Because most of the patches are camouflage green and black, I suppose I could dye any patches on a vintage jacket I buy that color scheme but there’s something about dying a red, white and blue American flag olive green that grinds my teeth.
MY OWN SOLUTION
I'm coming at these jackets not as a would-be clothier (rest easy, Ralph) but as a fine artist, (what the French call a "primitif," their supercilious phrase for "self-taught") One day I figured, what would be a better incentive for someone to commission one of my $600 portraits of their collector car than to first paint the portrait on a 20” x 30” canvas, and then, after presenting the painting, to present them with a leather fighter/combat jacket bearing an image of that same painting? To get the ball rolling, the first few I made sport a little tagline at the bottom telling folks that notice it where they can order a painting , but for the customers commissioning my fine art automotive portraits, the portraits reproduced on their jacket will be free of hoopla. By the way I tried denim jackets first, but figured that since, n my neck of the woods , you can still buy one for $5 at a swap meet, there's no upside since it costs me the same to print the image and have it sewn on using denim as it does on leather. And after I visited the RL Ranch store on Melrose (fashionable street in Los Angeles) and saw one leather bomber jacket for $2200 and another for $2600, I figured there is no theoretical top end price in leather.
I have had some success so far. An owner of a newish Ferrari and a recent Porsche took a jacket in advance of me painting his car's portrait but the jacket that fit best (he tried some from a trunkfull I had brought) had the wrong Ferrari on the back.
" No problem, I sez " I'll switch the car on the back to your own car once I finish the portrait." He’s the perfect customer in a way because he’s a well heeled executive in a beach community who likes to “dress down “ in the morning, where in the winter, it can be, yes, egad...all of 45 deg. F (I know that makes you East Coasters laugh, that we on the Coast think that’s cold).
Presently the jackets have nothing on the front, no name tag, no pseudo military badges. Some of the early ones had the Ferrari prancing horse on the sleeve.
I’m still working out the details but think I'm on the right path. After all. no less than Ralph is blazing the way with his bomber jackets. Pathfinder on the mission or whatever they call it.
For myself, I picked the softest leather one from the stack and it gives me great pleasure to wear it. It’s got a detachable fur collar. Twice at events, photographers from the media asked to photograph me in it. And that collar. Not a little mousy bit of fur but long black fur, say 5”. I don’t care that they outlawed the sale of new fur in Beverly Hills, I’m originally from Michigan and plan to tell any critics of wearing fur that back in the Wolverine State we not only ate what we killed but wore it (well, I heard they did, that happened less and less after the ‘50s.)
Why not just sell automotive-themed jackets and forget about paintings? Well, that would put me in the clothing field and I kind of like being a fine artist even if the French call me a primitif.....
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The author would like to hear from vintage clothiers who want to stock one of his jackets. Write [email protected]
When I was a kid in Michigan, there were still plenty of WWII veterans out and about, and more recently Korean war vets.
A lot of them, and their sons, on weekends in winter, sported fighter jackets, also sometimes called bomber jackets
I am nominating that classic two front pocket style as the model for the perfect sports car/hot rod jacket. I am talking waist length only, no longer. For a long time they were called "Eisenhower" jackets, as Ike wore those often in Europe during the war in Europe.
Why am I nominating this jacket? Because, other than a blue cotton denim jacket, no other casual jacket carries such a huge weight of tradition behind it. The style actually goes back to WWI.
I found out about their desirability in Malibu where I occasionally attend an early morning Cars 'N Coffee. Now Malibu has some highly unusual demographics. Like only 13,000 residents but on weekends maybe 50,000 visitors.
Plus every home is worth one million. And the most expensive is up around $150 million (though you might call Cher’s beachside digs a “compound” since there are several houses behind the 12-foot walls)
And yet, at these cars and coffee car shows, which usually began at sparrow’s fart, say, 7 am, what do you see locals wearing? Denim jackets, the kind that can be found for $5 at a swap meet and leather jackets that it look like the one that granpa wore over in Korea on those bombing runs.
What these rich swells like to do is “dress down” in the morning so no one suspects that they are the guy in that new Netflix series or that they could buy that battered Rolex you’re carrying with pocket change. And it’s almost laughable how tattered a leather jacket they want. They not only want leather but "distressed" leather. Nothing is worse to them than wearing a jacket that looks like you just bought it yesterday.
And the style leader for this movement is none other than that ultimate taste arbiter of car collecting, Ralph Lauren. Nobody can question Ralphs taste in cars--in Ferraris for instance, he owns the most desirable of all, a 250GTO. In clothing, he’s been a master arbeiter of taste for the last 50 years. He’s been wrong on some trends (sorry, Ralph, nobody’s worn pin collars for 30 years) but on the distressed leather bombers, I gotta say he's right on. He’s found a way to make them look like they’ve been worn every day for 40 years (except for pristine linings and cuffs) and that’s pretty hard to imagine when the guy wearing them is some 20 year old Junior from Pepperdine Malibu.
THE REAL JACKETS
Why not just collect the real ones? The war-time ones with the military insignias? One problem is that the real ones were usually cowhide, and to me that's a hard surfaced material, not warm and friendly. I prefer ultimately lambskin. Some kind of soft leather. And the color? I am betting most military ones were brown, so I’ve been collecting jackets that are brown, all shades of brown (except light tan) but definitely not black, which I identify (if they have lots of zippers) with Marlon Brando in The Wild Ones. And if they're really long and black, well, we all know who wore full length black leather coats in WWII. Definitely not the good guys....
And of course an original bomber jacket might have a nametag attached. It’s almost sacrilegious to remove the nametag of someone who earned that jacket while serving. And the patches, now I haven’t figured out if the patches on Ralph's pseudo-military jackets are real military patches or not. Because most of the patches are camouflage green and black, I suppose I could dye any patches on a vintage jacket I buy that color scheme but there’s something about dying a red, white and blue American flag olive green that grinds my teeth.
MY OWN SOLUTION
I'm coming at these jackets not as a would-be clothier (rest easy, Ralph) but as a fine artist, (what the French call a "primitif," their supercilious phrase for "self-taught") One day I figured, what would be a better incentive for someone to commission one of my $600 portraits of their collector car than to first paint the portrait on a 20” x 30” canvas, and then, after presenting the painting, to present them with a leather fighter/combat jacket bearing an image of that same painting? To get the ball rolling, the first few I made sport a little tagline at the bottom telling folks that notice it where they can order a painting , but for the customers commissioning my fine art automotive portraits, the portraits reproduced on their jacket will be free of hoopla. By the way I tried denim jackets first, but figured that since, n my neck of the woods , you can still buy one for $5 at a swap meet, there's no upside since it costs me the same to print the image and have it sewn on using denim as it does on leather. And after I visited the RL Ranch store on Melrose (fashionable street in Los Angeles) and saw one leather bomber jacket for $2200 and another for $2600, I figured there is no theoretical top end price in leather.
I have had some success so far. An owner of a newish Ferrari and a recent Porsche took a jacket in advance of me painting his car's portrait but the jacket that fit best (he tried some from a trunkfull I had brought) had the wrong Ferrari on the back.
" No problem, I sez " I'll switch the car on the back to your own car once I finish the portrait." He’s the perfect customer in a way because he’s a well heeled executive in a beach community who likes to “dress down “ in the morning, where in the winter, it can be, yes, egad...all of 45 deg. F (I know that makes you East Coasters laugh, that we on the Coast think that’s cold).
Presently the jackets have nothing on the front, no name tag, no pseudo military badges. Some of the early ones had the Ferrari prancing horse on the sleeve.
I’m still working out the details but think I'm on the right path. After all. no less than Ralph is blazing the way with his bomber jackets. Pathfinder on the mission or whatever they call it.
For myself, I picked the softest leather one from the stack and it gives me great pleasure to wear it. It’s got a detachable fur collar. Twice at events, photographers from the media asked to photograph me in it. And that collar. Not a little mousy bit of fur but long black fur, say 5”. I don’t care that they outlawed the sale of new fur in Beverly Hills, I’m originally from Michigan and plan to tell any critics of wearing fur that back in the Wolverine State we not only ate what we killed but wore it (well, I heard they did, that happened less and less after the ‘50s.)
Why not just sell automotive-themed jackets and forget about paintings? Well, that would put me in the clothing field and I kind of like being a fine artist even if the French call me a primitif.....
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The author would like to hear from vintage clothiers who want to stock one of his jackets. Write [email protected]