New Arrivals

Four leather pieces landed in August, and they share a theme. Every one of them is built for cold rather than for a mild autumn evening.

That is deliberate. The market moved this year. The plain unlined black biker that carried the last decade has given way to lined jackets with real collars, and the colour has moved with it, away from black and toward chocolate brown and tan. Our buy followed that, and the four jackets below are the result.

• B3 Bomber in Brown with Sherpa Lining – $279. The warmest thing we make.
• Brown Leather Flight Jacket with Fur Collar – $199. The lighter version of the same idea.
• Black Leather Bomber Jacket with Fur Collar – $199. For anyone who wants the collar without the brown.
• Patchwork Leather Bomber in Multicolour – $299. The one that is not for everybody.

What Is a B3 Bomber Jacket?

A B3 bomber is a heavy sheepskin flight jacket with the wool left attached to the inside of the hide, so the lining and the shell are the same piece of material. It has a deep collar that folds up over the ears, wide cuffs, and usually one or two straps across the collar and waist to seal out wind.

It was issued to United States bomber crews from 1934, for men flying at altitude in aircraft with no cabin heating. Nothing about it was decorative. The collar existed to protect the neck and face, the straps existed to stop wind entering at the openings, and the wool was left on the hide because a separate lining would have compressed and lost its insulation.

Flight Jacket versus Bomber Jacket

They are the same thing, and anybody who tells you otherwise is selling something.

Both words describe a short jacket with a zip front, ribbed or knit cuffs and a hem that stops at the waist, designed originally for aircrew. The military designations are where the real distinctions live, and those are worth knowing because they describe genuinely different jackets.

Shearling Collar or Full Shearling

Two of this season's arrivals have fur collars. One is full shearling throughout. They solve different problems and cost different money.

Full shearling, as on the B3

• Wool across the entire body and sleeves
• Genuinely the warmest jacket we make
• Ages into a deep patina over ten years or more
• Heavy, in a way that feels substantial rather than awkward

Weakness: It is a real winter jacket and nothing else. Wear it in mild weather and you will overheat within twenty minutes.

Fur collar only, as on the flight and bomber jackets

• Wool at the neck, quilted lining through the body
• Warm at the neck, which is where most heat escapes
• Considerably lighter, and easier to wear indoors
• Roughly a third less money

Weakness: It will not carry you through genuine deep cold on its own.

Why Brown Is Outselling Black This Year

Black has carried leather for a decade and it is not going anywhere. But three of this season's four arrivals are brown, and that reflects what customers are actually buying.

Brown works with navy, grey, olive, cream and every wash of denim, and it does something black cannot: it lightens visibly at the elbows, shoulders and pocket edges as it wears. On black that would read as damage. On brown it reads as history, and on a shearling jacket with a ten year life that matters more than it does on a jacket you will replace in three.

The one thing brown will not do is sit comfortably next to black trousers or black boots, and no styling trick fixes that. If your wardrobe is mostly black, buy the black jacket and do not talk yourself into the brown one.

The Varsity Jacket Came Back

Two wool varsity jackets sit in this category, and they are here because the style returned rather than because they are new.

A varsity jacket, also called a letterman jacket, has a wool body, contrasting leather or vinyl sleeves, ribbed knit collar, cuffs and hem, and a snap front rather than a zip. It came out of American college athletics in the 1860s and has been in and out of fashion roughly every fifteen years since.

It is back now on the same wave that brought back low rise denim and wired headphones. If you wore one the first time around, that is a strange feeling and you have my sympathy.

What Else Is Here

Not everything in this category is leather, and pretending otherwise would waste your time.

• Cotton ranch jackets and vests are the light layer for autumn, cut from heavy cotton with a quilted lining. Warmer than a shirt, lighter than leather, and considerably easier to look after.
• Leather vests solve a specific problem: warmth through the core with full arm movement. Useful over a knit, and the traditional choice if you actually ride.
• Hoodies and zip through tops are cotton fleece, and they belong here as the layer that goes underneath everything else rather than as outerwear in their own right.

How to Buy From a Page That Keeps Changing

A new arrivals page is a bad place to browse and a good place to check.

The mistake people make is treating it as a catalogue. It is not. It is fifteen things that happen to have landed recently, chosen by us rather than by you, and they do not represent the range. If you know you want a biker jacket, go to mens leather jackets or womens leather jackets and filter properly.

Come here for the opposite reason: to find out what has changed since last time. That is genuinely all this page is for.

Sizing is the same across everything here. The shoulder seam should sit on the edge of your shoulder bone, not below it, and that is the one measurement a tailor cannot fix afterward. Every size we publish is measured flat from production samples on the size chart, and we cut made to measure on any leather piece if nothing standard fits you properly.

Caring for What You Just Bought

Shearling and plain leather want different things, and getting this wrong is expensive.

• Plain leather: condition twice a year and stop. Over conditioning clogs the grain and leaves the surface tacky.
• Shearling: do not condition the wool at all. Brush it with a soft suede brush when it flattens, and treat the leather side only.
• Never dry either with heat. Wipe rain off with a dry cloth and dry at room temperature away from any radiator. Heat pulls moisture out of hide too quickly and leaves it stiff and cracked, and that damage does not reverse.
• Store on a broad shouldered hanger with air around it. A B3 is heavy enough to distort its own shoulders on a thin wire hanger inside one season.
• Never seal leather in plastic. Hide needs to breathe or it grows mould.