Nov. 23, 2025
Biker Fashion Through the Ages: Legends and Their Styles
In this episode of the Throttle and Roast podcast, host Niels Meersschaert delves into the evolution of biker fashion, tracing its roots in pop culture. Starting with Marlon Brando's portrayal of the outlaw biker in the 1953 film The Wild One, he discusses how this image has shaped the typical motorcycle rider's aesthetic. Niels explores significant films, including The Great Escape and Easy Rider, highlighting key elements like leather jackets, blue jeans, and sunglasses that have become synonymous with biker style. He also touches on the subtle influences of these films, showcasing how the classic biker uniform has persisted and adapted over the decades.
Films
- The Wild One
- The Great Escape
- Easy Rider
- Mad Max
- The Loveless
- Long Way Round
- Wild Hogs
- The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
For riders
For non-riders
- Biker style guide for men
- The enduring appeal of biker fashion
- History of the biker aesthetic
- Ultimate Biker Fashion Guide
- Balenciaga enduro boots
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00:00 - Introduction
00:50 - History in pop culture
10:02 - Main elements of biker style
14:58 - Co-opting the biker style
16:27 - Wrap up
WEBVTT
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Fashion's fade, but style is eternal.
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Welcome to the Throttle and Roast podcast. I'm your host, Niels Meersschaert. I want to try a thought experiment with you. Close your eyes. Now imagine a motorcycle rider. What do you see them wearing? If it's a black leather jacket and blue jeans, you're not alone. That image of the rider's uniform has been around for nearly 75 years.
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We'll look back at a history of how pop culture has reinforced the stereotype and look at some common elements in biker style and how non-riders have co-opted the style to create their own bad boy aesthetic.
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So let's start with a little bit of history in pop culture, because I this is as motorcyclists, we have had an opportunity to see what the public perception is of a motorcyclist. And that has probably influenced our own internal definition of this. And it's also helped for those non-riders. if there's film that probably is the most referenced as being the sort of starting point for defining the biker style, it has to be the 1953 film, The Wild One. Now this crime film was directed by Laszlo Benedict and starred Marlon Brando. Now Brando's character, Johnny Strabbler was perhaps the first, if not one of the earliest examples of an outlaw biker in cinema. While the film itself is a cultural icon, it's cemented a fashion aesthetic for motorcyclists that still exists today. Brando wore a perfecto leather jacket made by Schott in New York or at least a replica of And Schott has been producing the perfecto since 1928. And it was originally designed specifically for motorcyclists. And paired with blue jeans, a T-shirt, and leather engineer boots, the image of the motorcyclist was truly cemented with The Wild One.
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Now 1963 brought The Great Escape, and this featured Steve McQueen. Now McQueen himself as an actor was actually personally an avid motorcyclist and even performed some of his own stunts in the film. But his character was actually a pilot, and many pilots also wore leather jackets, especially in the days before closed cockpits. If you were out in an open cockpit like was existent in World War One, you needed the leather jacket just to stay warm at altitude. the leather jacket was really a part of the image of a pilot.
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throughout most of the film, he's sporting this leather jacket And as we covered in our exploring the overlap pilots who ride motorcycles episode, there's a surprising amount of overlap amongst pilots and riders. So this cross-pollination of style isn't surprising. But there was one other contribution to biker style that that film featured in his motorcycle scenes. And this one's a little bit more subtle.
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It's one that is maybe not quite as iconic, but it's more common than you would expect. And this is essentially a sweatshirt with the arms cut off to become a t-shirt. And of course, many riders will use this sort of setup to keep their core warm on colder riding days, but avoid the restrictive movement of the sleeves if they had thick sweatshirt underneath their already tight leather jacket.
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And just a few years after the great Easy Rider And this is another classic biker film. It was released in 1969. And this saw Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper out on the open road. Now here, the formula for the image of the rider didn't change all that much. Fonda's character still sported a black leather jacket, albeit with some stripes and the American flag emblazoned on the back. And Hopper's character had a buckskin jacket with tassels in more of an earth tone. Now this counterculture style still remains a common theme amongst riders. And many women's riding jackets often keep the tassels maybe even as an homage to this film. Now both characters wore dark sunglasses, both to protect their eyes from the wind and bugs, but to cut down on the Southwest's beating sun. So this image of a motorcyclist with the sunglasses, the... blue the leather jacket.
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This has become such a, a commonplace image. And many films today do provide a little bit of an homage at least to Easy Rider, because it did create that image that was so powerful. Now another film that did feature some motorcyclists, also in the sort of still outlaw biker, this has been a common running theme amongst many of the films that we've talked about thus far, but the post-apocalyptic film Mad Max was released in 1979. And this even kept that perfecto jacket, even as the lead character, Max, drove a car. But in one of the opening scenes, perhaps the most pivotal for him was his wife and son were killed by bikers who were also sporting that classic leather jacket. Although many of them also had pants to match.
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And this from Hollywood of the outlaw biker really didn't change all that much. In 1981, we had The Loveless. This starred to Willem Dafoe picking up the mantle of Brando with another one of these biker outlaw films. And this one was set in the fifties, the same time period as what was for the wild one, because it was actually in the fifties. And with the now ubiquitous uniform of a leather jacket and blue jeans, Dafoe's character Vance runs with an outlaw gang of greasers. Now, if we jump forward about 20 years, there's gonna be the first film that starts TV series, that starts to change a little bit of the common perception of motorcyclists as belonging to this outlaw biker gang That was really with Long Way Round, and this was released in 2004.
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perhaps this TV series is really the one that helped kick off the adventure motorcycle segment's popularity. Way Round and the subsequent films, all featured McGregor and Charlie Borman on board BMW GSs, at least for the first two series. And then they were wearing their BMW-branded textile adventure suits, and thus, the aesthetic of the modern ADV rider was born. So this is the beginning of where we start to see a little bit of different variation from the classic leather jacket. perhaps the most campy homage to some of the earlier films was the 2007 film Wild Hogs. And of course, this had John Travolta, it had Tim Allen, and also featured Ray Liotta as the almost cliché at this bad boy, outlaw biker. in this case, it was kind of funny because this film was really about suburban middle-aged men their fantasy aboard their Harleys with the requisite uniforms of jeans and a black leather jacket. it's almost making fun of this weekend warrior stereotype that I think a lot of people have as a belief of those who ride. And maybe it is somewhat true because, at least from some reports in the US here, more than half of riders ride less than a thousand miles a year on their bikes. So if you're doing so few miles, you might be only riding on the weekends. You might only be riding down to the local pub or cafe or whatever you're doing.
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And more recently, there's been shows like Monster Garage, American Chopper, Sons of Anarchy, And these have continued that sort of outlaw biker uniform of the leather jacket clad biker. But there's another style of riding gear that I do want to highlight because I think when we kind of think of this typical bomber style leather jacket that we look at a lot of motorcyclists, they tend to be black There's another variation of this that actually another sort of popularity around the globe. And for those who actually use these, they actually do have a real utility to them that people do enjoy. in the 2008 film Benjamin Button, Brad Pitt's character ages backwards in the film. we see sport this other icon in the Bellstaff jacket. Now Bellstaff, of course, is a UK brand.
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They've been producing gear forever at this point, but unlike the other jackets we typically see where the length ends at the waist, the Bellstaff is commonly a three-quarter length jacket. So it offers a little bit additional coverage over the front of the pants. And of course, while the leather variant that was featured in the film is still popular, one other type of material that you'll see in a lot of these type of Bellstaff is a waxed cotton. And this is perfect for the wet conditions of the UK and elsewhere because the waxed cotton helps keep the rider dry and then the longer length afforded from that three-quarter length jacket actually avoid some of that wet If you've ever been riding and caught into a rainstorm and you have a short length jacket, and maybe you're wearing just regular jeans, well, they're not going to be waterproof and all that water is going to pool in the bottom of the seat right into your crotch and get you wet. So with that three-quarter inch jacket, it can provide a little bit of deflection of that — and help keep you a little bit drier. Now, Bellstaff was also featured in the Long Way Down. This was the next series that they the Long Way Round series, and it gave another bit of a take on how you could have an adventure look on the bike, not just being the technical textile So when we think of what we've learned from some of cultural moments within film and television that are kind of highlighting aesthetic of motorcyclists is, there are a few main elements that typically do start to arise. So one of them, of course, is really ubiquitous black leather jacket.
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And while the Perfecto was the earliest iconic jacket, there's also been a lot of bomber style variants taken pilots that are popular as case. But another one that is reliable and somewhat popular for a lot of people is this waxed cotton jacket, that Bell Staff style, three-quarter length. I have one that's actually made by Revit called the Livingston, but it's the same if you're riding a Triumph, especially one of the modern retros, it almost seems a requirement to have one of these three-quarter length waxed cotton jackets. It just, it aesthetically just really resonates with that style of Now many brands produce these type of jackets, not just Bell Staff.
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As I said, I have Revit. There's a few other brands that are producing these type of and especially if you have one of the British bikes, whether it's a Royal Enfield, or a Triumph, a BSA, etc., the style of that three-quarter length jacket really seems to resonate quite well with them. Now in another one that you will see pretty commonly, is almost these very bright leather jackets and leather pants. And this will typically be on a sports bike rider. Now they might be wearing it as a single-piece suit, or it could be a two-piece suit, but the bright colors will tend to match the bright colors on the motorcycle. And this is another aesthetic that you'll see out there. Some people will combine the two styles, so they'll have a bright leather jacket matches with their sport bike, but still be using blue jeans. So people mix it up a little bit, if you will, in terms of the style that they want to use. Now another couple of elements that we'll see in these pretty commonly is leather boots. Of course what we saw on the Wild One was the emergence from the 1940s of the leather engineer boots. These gave a little bit longer protection over the ankles. The idea being is that if you were riding and you had a fall off of the bike, as you're sliding along, it's not going to hit into your ankle quite as bad because you've got more coverage.
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And of course those textile suits that I mentioned, like the Adventure Rider ones, and these will come from a number of different brands, BMW of course makes their own style of these jackets, you've got other brands that are out there, Revit makes a lot of good gear for it, Klim of course here in the US does some phenomenal Adventure style suits, and these are all made out of textile, so these will a little bit than you would get from a leather. a lot of leather jackets, while they look extraordinarily cool, the problem is you really don't want to get them out in wet weather.
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And a textile jacket, some of these will even be full Gore-Tex lining inside, or they'll have a Gore-Tex covering on the outside of the jacket, so you don't even need to put in a liner. And this is why a lot of people have started to use these more textile jackets, especially for Adventure Riding, here in the US a lot of people will use, especially if they're doing a lot of common commuting, they might use an AeroStitch Roadcrafter suit. And the AeroStitch Roadcrafter I have one, mine, at this point is probably what, 10, 15 years old, but the thing is still rock solid. The beauty of that suit is But basically you can get in and out of the in about 30 seconds, and you can wear it over normal street clothes. you could just wear your regular clothes, I've taken it to go to work and I'm wearing maybe a full suit or whatever, you can just zip on the suit on top of it. Get to where you're going, zip out, and no one's the wiser that you came in on a motorcycle.
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So there's a real beauty of that.
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And a lot of motorcyclists, especially those who are doing long miles, the advantage of this being able to get in and out of that suit really quickly is a huge benefit. Now there's another aesthetic that you'll see on a lot of motorcyclists, and this tends to be more towards, I'll say, the cruiser style, or those who are maybe trying to mimic in some ways the outlaw rider. And this is the imagery of having skulls. And the skulls might be on the jacket, it might be on some elements that they've added onto the bike. But if you really think about this, motorcyclists, we're always facing our own mortality every time that we ride. It is more to ride a motorcycle than to ride a car just because we are more exposed.
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And so the skull has really been a staple in this biker style to kind of reflect that mortality that comes in. you see some of these imagery or iconography of these skulls and related sort of symbiology. That is part of the biker aesthetic.
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And this leads us to some of the mainstream appeal. As I said, what we've talked about this far is the imagery of motorcyclists in film. We've talked about some of the common elements that we as riders are commonly using in terms of our attire as we're riding. But the style of riders is something that many want to emulate, whether they ride or not. And there's even some guides that are out there for non-riders to emulate the biker style and actually throw a bunch of them into the show notes because as I was doing some research for this episode, I thought it was really funny just to see how many of them were talking about how you can look like a biker. if you are a rider, it's almost fun to read this and kind of the impression of some non-riders about what they think we do all the time. more interesting to me is that there's some major fashion houses like Balenciaga that offer gear that looks like it came straight off of a rider, including some Enduro boots.
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these are not something that one would normally look at and be like, Oh my God, those are beautiful Italian, luxury fashion boots. It's like, no, they look like you just got off of an Enduro bike, but they're selling them as something for people to wear around on the street. So, it's fascinating how the extreme styles that we'll wear on our gear, people are trying to emulate that from a style for the non-rider public.
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So, we looked at some of the mass media imagery of motorcyclists and how that both reinforced, but it may have even created the style that motorcyclists choose to use. We also looked at some common elements of these rider styles.
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And while the leather jacket is popular, it isn't the only one out there. And finally, we looked at how the biker style is emulated even by those who don't ride. So my question for you this week is, what is your go-to gear for Is it one of the ones that I covered or is it something Share your thoughts through the text of the show link in the show notes or leave a voicemail at throttledandroast.com slash voicemail. Thanks for listening.
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I'll talk to you next week.
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