British Leather Boys

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

Motorbike boots and vintage riding gear.

Vice: How did Lewis Leathers come to be a household name?

Derek Harris:

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?

NME, Melody Maker

Goal, Shoot

Football Monthly

Weekend, Tidbits, Exchange and Mart

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.

So that classic waist-length biker jacket is the evolution of that?

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.

The Wild One

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

So the Teddy Boys and the rockers: I guess they’re two little strands of the same subculture.

There was also that very British eccentricity, which was added to the early Elvis dandyism with the pinks and blues.