As the biting chilly air and dark grey evenings of a London winter really start to set in, I've noticed that the shops are full to the brim of leather jackets. They're beautifully soft to the touch, some are given the worn and faded look and others and shiny and black. Some have those white fur collars, the ones that make your neck feel warm just by looking at them, others have built in hoodies to make it look as though you're wearing a hoodie underneath.
There are biker style jackets, bought by people who've never dreamed of riding a motorbike, there are world war two fighter pilot's ones, bought by people whose knowledge is gleaned entirely from watching Airplane and there are trench coats, worn by fellows who haven't even watched Blackadder goes forth.
And all these jackets, as different as they are, have one thing in common; they're all not made from leather, which kind of reminds me of the old joke, you know the one.
Chap A says: What have Attila the Hun, Winnie the Pooh and Henry VIII got in common?
Fellow M says: I don't know, what have they got in common?
Chap A: They've all got the same middle name. Badumtish.
Luckily I'm a drummer so I can chuck in the "badumtish" with relative ease.
It seems that fake leather has reached a new level of sophistication. In these days of iPhones, Satnav, ereaders and the tiniest of remote control helicopters, ( hard to believe I know but I own one for office use) one would think that fake leather would have been an easy thing to perfect some time ago.
But no, for so many years fake leather has looked as shiny as a black bin bag dipped in varnish, felt about as authentic as Celine Dion playing drums with James Brown's band and smelt like Jerry's underpants after the elephant incident. Around these parts the only people wearing them were fellows going to a fancy dress party dressed as the Fonz. Or poor people.
Then bang, the boffins went and perfected the stuff. They've probably got to a stage where everything else has been invented, apart from time travel and a PC operating system that actually works of course. I've heard that time travel is close though.
These current versions really do feel like leather, they look like leather and they cost about a quarter of the price. The odour isn't authentic just yet, but at least it's not as repugnant as it used to be (sorry Jerry). As I've been casually browsing through racks of the things more often than not I have to look at the label to figure out if they're real or fake.
Naturally, as the metrosexual man about town whom you know so well, I had to buy one. It's got that brown and faded look going on, is softer to the touch than a kitten wearing a velvet waistcoat and looks even better.
And it was so
Normal people like us have to wear the latest thing for one season and then face about four or five years of wearing it and looking like a person who doesn't even know what ANTM stands for.
As far as I'm concerned fake leather is the new real.
And cows are happier too.
1 comment:
Hmmm... I guess your drummer credentials are enough to justify the wearing of leather. Never could quite get into the whole thing. Love browsing in the Belstaff shop, but never considered the purchase of one. Boots yes!
Brave soul RD, brave. Bravo!
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