Why biker jackets are about to get cooler this year

When Rosalìa debuted with Motomami, her third studio album, she probably wasn't expecting to bring the biker girl style back, an aesthetic historically epitomised by the good old biker jacket. The leather jacket, which all teenagers craved, became an object of desire in the 1990s thanks to stars such as Winona Ryder and Kate Moss, who used to pair it with jeans and slip dresses. Not long ago, on Netflix, it resurfaced out of nowhere, thanks to Girlboss series' star Sophia Amoruso, who showed just how important a leather jacket (hers was vintage and brightly coloured) can be in the making of a badass look. All the ex-teenagers who had kept a leather jacket in their wardrobes, whether black or multi-coloured, brought it back without objections, also because of brands such as Chanel, Dior, Courrèges, Diesel and Martin Rose, when top designers confirmed dressing like cool bikers is quintessentially the current hit-style.

The trend had been confirmed, in a decidedly more flirtatious way, by Emily in Paris. The stylist of the series, Patricia Field, introduced in many of the looks of Emily's character not only leather jackets, but also fingerless biker gloves, which the character played by Lily Collins enhanced with multi-coloured dresses or in combination with the beret typically à la française. In short: the Motomami look is still being admired, and manages to distinguish itself according to the styles of the wearer and depending on the mood, more or less rock or romantic. What is certain is that the leather jacket remains iconic. Think of the strange case of Dolce & Gabbana's 2000s leather jacket, sported at the time by Victoria Beckham and Brittany Murphy and then ending up among the top items in It-girl Camille Charriere's wardrobe, and which at a dinner party had attracted precisely Posh Spice's attention. What is pleasing about that jacket and those spotted on Dua Lipa, Bella Hadid and Julia Fox, is their colourfulness, and the style somewhere between sophisticated and racing-chic, (and here the reference that immediately jumps to the eye of those who wore it a few decades ago is Penelope Pitstop all dressed in pink, from the cartoon Wacky Races).

The great thing about this jacket is that it is the epitome of circularity, because girls dream of authentic models, not those from some fast fashion company, and their search is as painstaking as Sophia Amoruso's in Girlboss, in second-hand stores or on the best online genre sites. The curious history of this jacket makes the search for the perfect model that can add a new chapter to this modern fairy tale even more intriguing. The first model was created in the 1960s by brothers Irving and Jack Schott, who began assembling leather garments by hand in their New York shop, responding to the growing demand from post-World War II motorcyclists for a garment capable of protecting against wind and rain. Hence the birth of the Perfecto jacket, with its asymmetrical button fastening and waist belt, still iconic today. It became first the outerwear of motorcyclists, and then of the American Air Force, but it was Marlon Brando, James Dean and Steve McQueen, with their handsome and damned aura, who convinced even the mainstream to wear it as a sign of rebellion. And then it was fashion's turn.

Although it was thanks to Yves Saint Laurent if this garment made it to the catwalk, when he first showed it on the catwalk for Christian Dior, it was the rockers Joan Jett and Debbie Harry who made it feminine, until the arrival of the visionary Vivienne Westwood who turned it into a punk (and genderless, although at the time this word did not yet exist) outerwear par excellence. Today, we are not surprised by its return, because the 2000s have always fascinated fashion. And with cybernetic technology and the Metaverse not too dissimilar from the cyber and Matrix 2000s, it was quite logical that the then-called leather nail became the time capsule to transform itself into a futurist version of the perfecto, obviously with some thematic modifications. Courrèges, with its Scuba Biker Jacket designed by Nicolas di Felice, reinvents the codes of the maison's 1981 garment designed by André Courrèges himself, which is now contaminated by oversized volumes and design elements taken from technical biker clothing. In conclusion, the leather jacket is vintage, but already looking to its evolution. Not only with panels in bright colours, but also with fluorescent or reflective inserts. OK, motomami?