ESSENCE OF COOL? by GARAGELAND

Photography • Music • posted on Apr 29, 2012

Open full image in new tab Zoom on image

Hover over top left image to zoom.
Click anywhere to exit.

Members remain the original copyright holder in all their materials here at Renderosity. Use of any of their material inconsistent with the terms and conditions set forth is prohibited and is considered an infringement of the copyrights of the respective holders unless specially stated otherwise.

Description

In the later-half of the 20th and achieved iconic status and general acceptance through a link to Hollywood. Bomber jackets were popularized by numerous stars in the 1940s and 1950s, including actor Jimmy Stewart (Night Passage, 1957), who had actually commanded a U.S. bomber squadron during World War II. The brown leather jacket has become a de rigueur part of wardrobe for the Hollywood adventurer, from Gary Cooper in For Whom the Bell Tolls to Harrison Ford in the Indiana Jones film series. A leather jacket could be used to shape a character, providing an important ingredient used to define the very essence of 'cool'. Prime examples include the Perfecto motorcycle jacket worn by Marlon Brando's Johnny Strabler in The Wild One (1953), Honor Blackman as Cathy Gale in The Avengers, and Michael Pare in Eddie and the Cruisers duo (1983 and 1989). As such, these all served to popularize leather jackets in American and British youth from the "greaser subculture" of the 1950s and early 1960s. Later depictions of this subculture are seen via The Fonz from the television series Happy Days, which was produced in the 1970s and 1980s, but shows life in the 1950s and 1960s (Fonzie's leather jacket is now housed in the Smithsonian Institution), and in the film duos Eddie and the Cruisers and Grease. Flight jackets, also (occasionally with fleece collars, as seen in the 1986 film, Top Gun), have remained fashionable for decades. Hava a nice sunday.