Leather Jackets: Post Pictures of the Best You've Seen/Owned?

It doesn't look like it's stitched, it's probably a sandwich of leather/foam/some sort of thin man-made backing and then they run it through a machine that basically waffle irons all those ridges in and fuses the man-made parts to the leather so that it quilts like that. On the other hand, could be completely different, the lining looks to be knit fabric. I guess it's interesting but most leather treatments like that end up being ugly if used in clothes - like perf leather, etc.

Interesting, I'm kind of curious if that will hold up it's shape/pattern after years of wear?



impolyt_one said:

that bedazzled butterfly or whatever it is on the collar will get old, fast

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maybe. i don't mind it. couldn't be too hard to remove.



brad-t said:

maybe. i don't mind it. couldn't be too hard to remove.

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I guess, but removing stuff from a design isn't what comes to mind when buying $1600 clothes. I dunno, maybe I am a leather jacket plebe?

well i'm definitely not saying you should buy it haha

oh, the back suede panel with the butterfly logo is actually detachable. you can also swap it around to cover the front, i believe.



RFX45 said:

Also, I don't think I've seen ribbed leather before, looks like leather corduroy.

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That reminds me ever so slightly of this V&R:

Lamb 5-zip, I know it's practically the same jacket in different pics but this one is lamb and looks much thinner but cost $600+ more.






I think I'll probably pull the trigger on the bovine version this weekend, hopefully the store still has the 34 and 36 this weekend so I can try both on.

Tried on this KK Attachment jacket while I was in Hong Kong last week. NicelyNice you have NICE taste.. leather was amazing.



NN's pic:



Selling for US$3500 in HK though.. ouch. It's US$2100 on Attachment's online store in JPN.. not sure why such a big difference (although H Lorenzo here in LA is even more ridiculous, at US$4100).

I used to be head over heels for the 5-zip, but I'm not feeling it with the sliver zippers. I love the thinness of the lamb leather, but I feel like it would look much better without the two diagonal zips. Of course, then it wouldn't be a 5-zip (literally) so I obviously don't know what I'm talking about.

I'm currently loving the look of the Rick Owens high-neck Intarsia and Stooges.



tellure said:

Tried on this KK Attachment jacket while I was in Hong Kong last week. NicelyNice you have NICE taste.. leather was amazing.

NN's pic:

Selling for US$3500 in HK though.. ouch. It's US$2100 on Attachment's online store in JPN.. not sure why such a big difference (although H Lorenzo here in LA is even more ridiculous, at US$4100).

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Japanese retail model doesn't price things to support foreign retail models, prices in Japan are marked up far less than foreign boutiques/sellers do, so when the Japanese make a wholesale price for selling to third parties, that price isn't that far off from the retail price in Japan.



impolyt_one said:

Japanese retail model doesn't price things to support foreign retail models, prices in Japan are marked up far less than foreign boutiques/sellers do, so when the Japanese make a wholesale price for selling to third parties, that price isn't that far off from the retail price in Japan.

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Can you elaborate a bit on this, Drew? It's quite interesting.

I don't know the multipliers (LA Guy has a better idea on this topic, and I think Fuuma does as well) - but basically the Asians an the Japanese in particular have normally sold domestically through direct sales and then it's hard to make a case for selling their product via third-party boutiques.
In addition, the labor in Japan for Japan-made stuff (and it's either old Japanese ladies most of the time for the really quality, unique things, or probably third-world immigrants for big mass-produced MIJ stuff) - it's more expensive than even Made in Italy (where it's all Chinese people or gypsy types who work for less than you'd think, considering the price of the items). IN addition to that, most stuff besides YKK zippers and maybe some domestically tanned calf and horse plus Japanese cupro lining, the rest of it is imported, whereas maybe the Italians have a domestic source for these things. tl;dr: Japanese stuff costs more to make, is priced lower.
That was the way it worked for a long time, now you see makers like Visvim breaking onto an international stage and they're having to raise their prices into the stratosphere so that they can offer wholesale prices that don't require a foreign boutique to basically buy at retail. They could've lowered the quality but that wasn't an option, in their position. So, the price went up instead. They make more money on the domestic sales floors and then they have a wholesale price for foreign shops where they're not giving the product away to saturate the market for little to no return.

My guesstimate for Japanese brands that use the old model and not the Visvim 'raise prices lol' model - I'd say the markup between item cost (labor and materials, shipped to the store, plus taxes in) - they might mark it up by like, 3-5 times? Maybe Julius gets the product tagged and bagged, shipped to that black Daikanyama store and they slap a price that's about 4 times the cost of what it took to make the jacket and then the rest is profit. That's why all the Japanese leather jackets used to be in a similar price range if they were of similar materials - lambskin jackets were like 158,000Y and cheaper leather was like 118,000Y - it was that way for years and still kind of is. There is just a market price to make and sell leather jackets because the manufacturing and wholesale base is small and they use similar materials.

Western-based manufacturing, I think since that stuff is not always for Italian brands and therefore product travels several times and gets touched by a number of people, the markup from cost (labor, materials, shipping, tax in) to retail tag price, the markup is probably like 10-20 times of that cost. The 'brand' doesn't make that much since they're just wholesaling. An MMM 5-zip leather jacket might cost like $150 to make and then they mark it up to like $1000 for wholesale to boutiques, and then boutiques mark it up to $3200 or something. Tons of useless hands in the pot when it comes to the old-world retail model.

I thought typical US apparel retail markup was between 2x and 3x (gross margin between 50% and 66% or retail price). From what you've said in the past, it sounds like the retailer in Japan typically operates on thinner margins (maybe 1x-2x multiplier?), which seems very counter-intuitive given the likely higher average cost of real estate (and labor) in Japan. So I guess the only way it could work for them is if the stores are much more productive, i.e. have much higher sales per square foot, than US retailers. Something that's not hard to believe for specialty retail - I've been to extremely "compact" stores in Japan - but is hard to comprehend for department stores - a Daimaru or Takashimaya doesn't seem much more productive than Macy's or Nordstrom at first glance.

christ, you may as well buy a plane ticket to japan and buy the jacket there for cheaper and get a trip out of it.