As the 1980s progressed, surplus styles became more entrenched in the trend cycle of fashion. While the broadest definition of military surplus clothing like field jackets and fatigue trousers, melted into the mainstream diet of popular fashion next to jeans and canvas sneakers, specific styles became the subject of trends. Throughout the 1980s, flight jackets would have a surge in popularity. Influenced by popular culture and nostalgia, the flight jacket trend would even reach into the military itself. In this era, as more fashion brands made military-influenced clothing, surplus stores and their wares became became “authentic.” Authenticity became the currency that surplus uniforms traded in, just as actual surplus uniforms from militaries became rarer and rarer. By the beginning of the new century, surplus stores would be overrun with reproductions and newly made uniforms and authentic military uniforms would move into the realm of collectors and specialty retailers.
The 1980s saw a series of Hollywood films that put flight jackets on the back of men across the country. At the top of the list were The Right Stuff (1983), and Top Gun (1986). These films and their flight jacket-clad leads spurred on a trend in flight jackets throughout much of the 1980s. President Reagan’s wearing of US military leather flight jackets – its own mini-trend among presidents that has yet to abate – also put them on the front page. In 1981, GQ said that a reproduction WWII leather flight jacket was a “fall’s classic must have.” By the end of the decade in 1988, it was still being reported that “the jacket seems to be everywhere,” with mall shops like Sharper Image selling them.
In the early 1970s, Jeff Clyman, a vintage warplane enthusiast, had a problem. The Long-Islander spent much of his free time flying WWII vintage aircraft and wearing his father’s WWII leather flight jacket. But, it was the only flight jacket Clyman had to wear, and it was getting old. He had collected a wide array of vintage WWII leather flight jackets, but “the supply dried up quickly. It’s rare to find any original Army Air Corps jackets anymore,” he told GQ in 1981. So, Clyman began making his own, learning how to produce leather flight jackets, and Avirex was born. The brand had early success in Europe, but it wouldn’t be until Ralph Lauren asked Avirex to produce two leather flight jackets in 1979 and then Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), where Harrison Ford wears a leather jacket, did the brand start to take off in the US. Basing their designs of original WWII leather jackets like the G-1 and A-2, Avirex became the decade leader in the flight jacket trend. By the 1980s, Avirex had opened the boutique “Cockpit USA” in SoHo to sell jackets along with other reproductions and surplus styles.
A key to Avirex’s success and the popularity of flight jackets in general, were the films of the 1980s. In 1983, the company partnered with Warner Brothers to promote The Right Stuff, specifically the pilot Chuck Yeager’s leather A-2 jacket. They would partner with a movie again in 1986 with Maverick’s jacket in Top Gun. After Top Gun, “The popularity of the bomber jacket soared.” By 1988, the Washington Post reported that “Retailers refused to be left in the dust.” The story continues to say that “Ralph Lauren made two versions [of the leather flight jacket] for Polo this fall – a "bomber" jacket with a shearling collar for $895 and a "flight jacket" with a leather collar for $450. Macy's, inspired by the French aviators of the 1920s airmail service, has opened a specialty store called Ae'ropostale.”
The flight jacket trend was so mainstream by the late 1980s, that it was the subject of a cartoon in the July 1989 issue of Playboy. In the cartoon, a large room is filled with partygoers, all wearing leather flight jackets, pilot’s caps, camouflage trousers, and silk scarves. In the center, a woman wearing a flight jacket talks to the only party-goer not in flight gear, but wearing a check blazer and tie. The caption: “Whoa! You mean, like, you actually were a World War Two bomber Pilot?”
While the surplus trends of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s were connected to societal changes, returning soldiers after world war two, college fashions, or political stances, this flight jacket trend was squarely situated in the mainstream, older adult, middle-class fashion. A man in his forties who was interviewed by the Washington Post about his flight jacket in 1988 said, “it changed my life," the reporter added, “after he [the man] bought a bomber jacket he started playing his old electric guitar again.” By the 1980s, t those who had come of age in the 1960s were looking to recapture their youth. The flight jacket was part of men’s “midlife crisis.” One psychologist said, “you are being defiant-defying gravity and being rebellious as an adult." He continued, “the way I see it, buying the leather flight jacket is a symbol. Symbolizing virility, masculinity." Put even more succinctly, “it's a look that makes women fantasize, men identify.”
But what may be curious here is that the youth that was being reached back to was not their own baby boomer selves but that of their fathers, the ones who wore flight jackets over Berlin and Tokyo and on college campuses after the war, “partly because they were comfortable, utilitarian garments, and partly because they had "war hero" written all over them.” This was the era of nostalgia for WWII and the 1940s. Many of the articles on the popularity of the flight jackets cite old WWII movies, released either before many readers were alive or in their childhood, like Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo. As one trend piece on flight jackets put it, “adventure, nostalgia, pure braggadocio -- all are neatly zippered into this one simple garment.”
While the leather flight jacket was enjoying appreciation by civilian sartorialists and the midlife crises set, the Air Force also took notice. The Air Force originally ceased producing leather flight jackets during WWII, opting for the more cost-effective fabric and faux fur before these were replaced with nylon. When the Air Force was reaching its 40th anniversary as an independent branch in 1988, it decided to bring back the A2 flight jacket. With modern pressurized and heated cabins, the reintroduction of the leather flight jacket was purely aesthetic. And to the Air Force’s credit, they admitted as much, a spokesperson said the goal was “To enhance esprit de corps and to recognize the Air Force's front-line pilots, navigators and enlisted air-crew officers." The Air Force was engaged in its own fashion campaign. While now obsolete and anything but utilitarian as it once was, the A2 represented what the Air Force believed looked cool, fashionable, and most importantly, what they thought they were supposed to look like. As an article stated, “pilots will start to look like pilots again.” Just one more case of “military life imitating fashion.” or, more correctly, a case of military uniforms as fashion.
Till next time,
C.W.M.
* * *