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British Leather Boys

By 1954, rock ’n’ roll had begun to flourish in Europe, evolving with its own eccentricities.

The author, left, with Derek Harris of Lewis Leathers.

By 1954, rock ’n’ roll had begun to flourish in Europe, evolving with its own eccentricities. From 1959 onwards, Hamburg, Brussels, Paris, London and many other towns and cities had become lucrative stopovers on the road for the first wave of American rockers. European kids were getting their first exposure to explosive performances by Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard and Eddie Cochran. Other US heroes like Gene Vincent had actually moved to Britain. Back home in America, times were getting hard for these wilder rockers, who found it hard to compromise by watering down their shows and looks for the mass market.

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At the dawn of the 60s, kids in Europe were discovering the liberating power of rock ’n’ roll in ever bigger numbers. The wilder it was, the greater its power to transcend the everyday boredom of the bombed-out landscapes they lived in. As the scene grew, and a new teenage fashion blossomed, the leather look of “the greaser” or “the rocker” was the style that horrified squares of all ages, conjuring images of sex, gangs, switchblades and motorcycles. By 1960, the biker look, also known as the “ton-up boy” and “café racer”, was beginning to cross over to street and stage wear. In Hamburg, the Beatles would often take the stage wearing leather jeans and jackets, looking like a tough biker gang. The garb had become shorthand for the dangerous, risk-taking outsider, whose motto was “Too fast to live, too young to die.” It was a look that appalled parents, but one that has echoed down the years, adopted by everyone from the Libertines to the Ramones and the Sex Pistols. Just check out Johnny Rotten in the video for “God Save the Queen” in 1977—he wears leather jeans as well as a pair of motorbike boots made by Lewis Leathers. Now, this venerable British brand has been making leather motorcycle gear since the 1920s. I caught up with the current custodian, Derek Harris, at the Lewis Leathers shop, which is tucked off Tottenham Court Road in central London. Derek knows a fair bit about the entwined history of rock ’n’ roll and the leather jacket in Britain.

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Motorbike boots and vintage riding gear.

Vice: How did Lewis Leathers come to be a household name?
Derek Harris: Originally the company was called D Lewis in 1892 and then in 1929 it became D Lewis Ltd. From 1960, the name Lewis Leathers was coined for the jackets that were aimed at the younger rider. As they became more and more popular everybody just called it Lewis Leathers. Even when I was a kid in Scotland, it was a kind of byword for quality. So Lewis Leathers were clever early on, advertising in magazines read by bands and teenagers in general?
That’s right. Obviously they were advertising in motorcycle magazines, but also in NME, Melody Maker, aiming at the rock ’n’ roll kids. As a kid myself in the 60s, I used to read Goal, Shoot and Football Monthly which would carry Lewis Leathers adverts, mainly for the simple centre-zip jackets and the three-button jackets that were part of the Lewis Leathers casual range. There were also adverts in magazines like Weekend, Tidbits, Exchange and Mart, across all media. It was a real household name. So the company’s roots were in general clothing, but then they began to make clothes for the motoring and the flying enthusiast, which was the height of modernity at that point.
Yes. The company started out making suiting and rainwear. We had a factory in the East End, probably to supply bigger shops in Oxford Street as well as our own. As the 1900s wore on, around 1920, there was D Lewis Ltd making leather clothing for cyclists, aviators and motorists. The old adverts were always for driving and flying kits. Leather was the predominant clothing, as both types of vehicle had no covering. For motorcycles, the problem was that the skirts on the full-length jackets would blow about, so they had various means of fastening the skirts to your legs with straps and such. People used to buy the coats and cut them in half to be waist-length. So that classic waist-length biker jacket is the evolution of that?
The earliest example of that type of jacket that we have is in a 1920s catalogue. There is one with a guy wearing a full-length leather flying coat, but the top half looks incredibly like a biker jacket. And there is another one with a D pocket on it which was waist-length in suede, but also available in leather, with a leather waistband and cuffs and an extra pocket on the left-hand side—that’s the roots of the Bronx jacket right there. It was named the Bronx jacket in 1956 and was marketed to younger customers.

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Leather motorbike gloves and a selection of biker badges.

I always thought that the Bronx jacket with the belt and the central buckle was the American style of biker jacket. The ones with the side buckles I think of as being British.
It’s not, it’s very British. I think the Bronx probably had the half-belt fitted to it to make it look like the American jackets, like the one Marlon Brando wore in The Wild One. But because of the British riding position, popular with the ton-up boys of the time, leaning right over the tank with low-slung handlebars, Lewis put a leather buckle on their version of the Bronx, so it didn’t scratch the tank. The American looks were more the Harley-Davidson upright cruising style. Plus, in Britain, motorcycles must have cost ten years’ wages on the instalment plan, so you wouldn’t want to scratch the paintwork. The Bronx jacket was tailored to the American riding position. It also had an action pleat in the back, which offered a bit more forward movement. As the 60s wore on, that riding position wasn’t adopted as much, and jackets like the Lightning gained more favour. It had two sets of straps and buckles, again positioned to avoid scratching the tank. It had really become the quintessential British riding jacket, there was nothing like it in America. The Japanese called it “the Lon-jyan” meaning “the London jacket”. So Lewis Leathers were very aware of the rock ’n’ roll market, which I guess was quite controversial at the time. There was the whole rock ’n’ roll riots thing. Some kid I know has gone to newspaper archives around the country and collected articles on rumbles, riots and cinema seat-slashing at the screening of Blackboard Jungle, and it shows there was a nationwide moral panic.
Yes, but when you think about the post-war baby boom, you had a huge number of teens with jobs, it was a huge market to target. A lot of the older guys had died in the war, so in the 50s and 60s the teenagers were the predominant market. This was when rock ’n’ roll was taking off massively in the UK in the late 50s and early 60s. Gene Vincent moved to the UK in 1963 and was touring along with Eddie Cochran. They both dressed in black leather to reflect a popular style among kids. And there was the film The Leather Boys in 1964, way before mod culture was captured on film. That was a kind of kitchen-sink film shot on location, using real rockers as extras—part of that great explosion of British films of the early 60s. 1964 was also the year of that Granada TV rock ’n’ roll special [called Whole Lotta Shakin’] with that genius title sequence which follows a motorcycle gang racing through the streets of Manchester, then driving right into the studio and parking behind Gene Vincent who goes straight into “Be-Bop-a-Lula”. So exciting!
Yes, obviously there were prototype rockers around before they were called mods and rockers. You had the ton-up boys in the late 50s. I don’t know where the rockers really came from. I saw an article in a British magazine with a letter from an American lady saying, “I don’t know what’s so tough about your Teddy Boys. We’ve got ‘ROCKS’ in New York, and your guys would run away from them.” And they were the motorbike riders, called “rocks”—maybe that’s where it came from.

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The Lewis Leathers Bronx jacket. Note the leather buckle that won’t scratch the tank.

It wasn’t just the bikers who were wearing the look—it was being worn on the streets. Images of those performers, like Gene Vincent, reverberated through the years. If you look at Johnny Rotten in the “God Save the Queen” video, he’s wearing leather trousers and English-style bike boots.
They were Lewis Leathers motorbike boots. I think Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren had a stall at the infamous ’72 Wembley Rock ’n’ Roll Revival show. That was the Let It Rock period of rock ’n’ roll and Teddy Boy clothing. [Opened in 1971, Let It Rock was a boutique run by McLaren and Patrick Casey selling secondhand clothes and Teddy Boy gear designed by Westwood at 430 King’s Road in Chelsea. In 1974 they changed the shop’s name to SEX and then, in 1980, to Seditionaries.] I think maybe in ’73 or ’74 they moved on from Teddy Boys and went into rockers, studded leather clothing and so on. Malcolm said in an interview that someone came into the shop with a pigeon studded onto the back of his leather jacket, which I am sure was a printed patch of an eagle sitting on an iron cross, something that was sold in the Lewis Leathers shop in the 60s and 70s. Anyway, he saw this jacket which had “Too fast to live, too young to die” on the back, and after that, he decided to change the shop name again. So that’s when he created the sign with the skull and “Too fast to live, too young to die”, which hung above the front of the shop at 430 King’s Road.
Teddy Boys were still turning up, a bit down in the mouth. But that’s what I find interesting about that shop: it went from Teddy Boys to rockers—still looking for the underground, outsider scenes, and the cults like the sex/bondage scene. By 1976, you had these proto-punk rockers coming in, who mixed and matched from all the different stocks: 1950s shoes from the Let It Rock era, the “Too fast to live, too young to die” studded t-shirts and leathers, plus all the SEX clothes. The punk rockers mixed it all up and created a new style. Yeah, it was a total mixture. I guess the transition from the the studded leather to the SEX clothes makes sense. There must have been a crossover in manufacture. If you wanted bespoke leather items, you would go to these little discreet backstreet manufacturers.
Yes, there was a London leather man in Battersea who made the leather studded wristbands and belts sold at SEX and Seditionaries, as well as supplying all sorts of odd items for the gay scene.

The Lightning, which became “the quintessential British riding jacket”.

I have seen 50s bondage magazines with ads at the back saying, “We will hand make in leather ANY DESIGN you send to us.” When I came to London in 1985, I was looking for a pair of made-to-measure leathers, I found them in a little shop called Expectations in Hoxton Square. It was a gay leather shop—they also made leather teddy bears or whatever you wanted. At that time, Old Street was full of leather goods manufacturers and had been for years. So there was a real collision of craftsmen and the underground clothing scene.
From the early 20th century, when immigrants from Russia and Eastern Europe came to Britain, the East End was always a big part of clothing manufacturing. Many of them were tailors who set up their own business in Aldgate and Brick Lane. In the late 70s and early 80s, leather jackets and the punk look were becoming popular and the East End manufacturers were always quick to spot a trend and move in to the market. You’ve got to supply the demand if you have a factory. There was a lot of leather clothing being made in that area, but I think it has mostly disappeared now. We still make all our jackets and trousers in London, though. So the Teddy Boys and the rockers: I guess they’re two little strands of the same subculture.
I don’t think it was really. I know the haircuts were the same, and there was Gene Vincent’s show on Granada TV with the dramatic opening sequence with the rockers riding into the studio. That was partly orchestrated by [TV producer] Jack Good, and partly the rockers would be there anyway. Teddy Boy, in its early incarnation, was just about style; taking over a style set by a load of dandies and adapting it. There was also that very British eccentricity, which was added to the early Elvis dandyism with the pinks and blues.
I still think it was very much a music-led movement with style incorporated into it, as all British movements were. There was an Italianate thing after that. I don’t know if music was in that too, but not much was written about it. You had the rockers and the mods, and the mods were certainly music-driven, and so were the skinheads and suedeheads that followed them. Rocksteady and early reggae was their sound, and style was again a major factor. Then with the punk thing, again it was music and style combined. But I always think the rockers were about motorcycles
first and whatever was in the charts was their soundtrack. They weren’t as bothered about music as they were about their bikes.