Leather Subculture
Post-war queer leatherman fashion of biker jackets, harnesses, chaps, peaked caps, and uniformed leatherwear codified through cruise bars.
- Palette
- black deep brown blood red chrome silver denim blue
- Signature garments
- Schott Perfecto leather jacket leather chaps Muir cap chest harness leather vest with club patches engineer boots
- Canonical brands
- Schott Mr S Leather Muir Cap Langlitz Leathers Tom of Finland Foundation Ludovic de Saint Sernin
About
The Leather subculture is a post-WWII queer (predominantly gay-male, with parallel lesbian, bisexual, and trans branches) sexual and social community that crystallised in the United States in the late 1940s, drawing on returning servicemen who had formed motorcycle clubs and on the broader BDSM tradition. The visual codes were codified through 1950s and 60s biker bars and leather bars in cities like New York (the Eagle), San Francisco (the Stud), Chicago, and London: full-grain black leather Schott Perfecto motorcycle jackets, leather chaps over jeans, peaked Muir caps (the leather-cap silhouette borrowed from Marlon Brando's 'The Wild One'), heavy chest harnesses, leather vests with club patches, engineer or combat boots, jock straps, and metal bracelets and rings. The community established its own colour-coded hanky language, formal etiquette, and competitive title scene (International Mr. Leather, founded 1979). Tom of Finland's drawings did more than anything to crystallise the visual aspiration. Modern fashion (Raf Simons, Rick Owens, Helmut Lang, Ludovic de Saint Sernin, JW Anderson) routinely lifts Leather codes; Berlin's Folsom Europe and SF's Folsom Street Fair remain the major scene events.
Not Punk — Leather Subculture is a post-WWII queer sexual-and-social community with its own etiquette, title scene, and codified visual language, predating Punk by decades.
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