Leather Jacket Guide: Bombers, Motos and Classic Cuts

Leather Jacket Guide: Bombers, Motos and Classic Cuts

A leather jacket is the outerwear piece that gets better every year you wear it. This edit sorts the leather jacket by cut, from bombers to motos to blazers. Choose the shape that suits the way you dress.

The leather jacket, by cut

A good leather jacket goes with jeans, dresses and tailoring. The right leather jacket depends on the fit you like and how often you plan to wear it, and this edit sorts them by shape so you can compare the options.

 

Lambskin is the softest and shows creases fast, cowhide is stiffer and lasts longer, and anything labelled leather look or vegan is not leather.

Leather Jackets line sheet of products from the edit

Easy, soft leather jackets

Street-style collage of 12 outfit photos featuring leather jacket, scattered and overlapping

Everyday leather

These are the leather jackets I would wear most days: shirt collars, funnel necks and soft blousons that sit over jeans or a dress. A.L.C.'s Brooks in chocolate and Madewell's lambskin Emery blouson are the easy ones, and fringe and a few quirky details are mixed in for when you want one thing to stand out.

Everyday leather

Well-worn from day one

These are the cuts that sit well over almost anything. Start here if you want one jacket that does it all.

Boxy and cocoon shapes

Clean lines

Here the shapes get cleaner: cocoon sleeves, boxy bodies and zips kept to a minimum. Pick a black or chocolate pair and it will go with everything you own.

Clean lines

Edge, with zips

Motos bring the edge, with asymmetric zips and a belted waist or a sharp collar. Wear one over a slip dress to balance soft with tough.

Moto and biker jackets

Bomber season

Bombers are easy, slightly slouchy and great with trousers, and the ribbed hem gives a casual finish. They run here from soft lambskin to slightly cropped, with DUNST's A-2 and its detachable shearling collar and HAIKURE's sheepskin with denim sleeves as the two with a story. The suedes are the ones to skip in the rain.

Bomber jackets

Cut short

A cropped hem works with high-waisted denim and midi skirts, and it keeps proportions neat. IRO's Ashville and Han are the slim, waist-length motos, MSGM's cocoa brown jacket is short and boxy, and R13 adds an asymmetric zip.

Cropped leather jackets

Designer leather jackets

Every jacket in this group comes from a designer label, and at this level the difference shows in the hide and the pattern pieces more than in any logo. The Row, which Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen started in 2006 around the idea of a perfect white T-shirt, is here with the Quintus. Khaite, which Catherine Holstein founded in New York in 2016, brings the Ixin bomber, and Toteme, the Stockholm label Elin Kling and Karl Lindman launched in 2014, has two: a minimal biker and a bonded leather car jacket.

 

The bigger houses each lean on a signature. Prada and Zeynep Arçay keep the biker classic, Balenciaga turns the shape into a wrap, Valentino and Brandon Maxwell soften theirs with shearling, and Versace and Chloé crop the hem. What I check first is the leather itself, because a supple lambskin and a stiff cowhide wear in completely differently. What I would skip is heavy studding if you want one jacket to wear for years, since plain hides age the most gracefully.

Designer leather jackets

Worth a second look

This last group is for when a classic shape feels too expected: leather blazers, python embossing and a hair-on cowhide crop. The SLOAN bomber goes oversized, and the Source Unknown is faux leather if you would rather skip real hide.

Blazers, python and hair-on cowhide

Caring for a leather jacket

Hang a leather jacket on a wide hanger and keep it away from direct heat. A little conditioning each season keeps the leather supple. If you want to keep browsing, I also put together The Jacket Edit and YSL Jacket Dupe.