This is a jacket which deserves a doctoral thesis. It’s made by Carhartt, a company known for manufacturing hardcore work clothes. Carhartt pants and jackets are most often stiff, boxy and durable; construction workers and farmers traditionally wear Carhartt. But now, in collaboration with Neighborhood, a Japanese company, Carhartt has produced a leopardskin-patterned mototorcycle jacket, with all sorts of inexplicable zippers and a nice, big, centrally located logo. This jacket is something Cher might toss on, if she was performing on an oil rig, or inside a cement mixer. If a welder was wearing this jacket, he’d also need capri pants. Here are some other thoughts on this enduring design motif:
Leopardskin even looks garish and sexy on leopards.
If you’re going to wear a sheer blouse, or white pants, you need leopardskin underwear, in order to tell people, “Yes, I know that you can see my underwear. That’s the idea.”
An actual leopardskin coat would seem both gorgeous and truly evil. Satan wears real leopardskin.
Leopardskin goes with the following: black, hot pink and zebra, and if you’re brave, all three. And if you’re extra brave, factor in some camoflauge print in an unlikely neon color.
Nobody ever accidentally wears, or even tries on, leopardskin. By wearing leopardskin you’re announcing, “Yes, you can call me Dagmar or Yolanda or Aunt Yetta. Especially if my shoes, leggings and eyeglass frames are also leopardskin.”
A faux leopardskin throw or faux leopardskin wall-to-wall carpeting are handy ways of informing visitors, “Of course I wish I lived in a nail salon. Don’t you?”
In the jungle, when a leopard slinks by, a lioness will always tell her lion, “Stop staring!”
