Black Rebel Motorcycle Club...The Schott Perfecto!

This Schott NYC 'Perfecto' motorcycle jacket was just too damn cool not to blog about, so we snapped a couple of pictures before selling it earlier today. There can be no disputing that a black leather biker jacket is bad-ass, and the Schott Perfecto is the leather biker jacket.

This one dates from around the mid to late 1970s

Designed by Irving Schott in 1928, the Perfecto was the first leather motorcycle jacket of its kind. Ever the innovators, Schott were also the first outerwear company to put a zipper on a jacket! The Perfecto was immortalized on the silver screen and introduced to a new audience in the process by Marlon Brando in the 1953 movie 'The Wild One', and is now universally recognized as a symbol of rock 'n' roll cool thanks in no small part to punk pioneers The Ramones, for whom the Perfecto was almost a uniform. More recently Lady Gaga & Lilly Allen have been seen rocking the jacket.

James Dean practically lived in his Perfecto

Marlon Brando as 'Johnny' in The Wild One, 1953

The Ramones revive the biker gang look in late 70s NYC

Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious once said he wanted to be buried in his!

For over 80 years, four generations of the Schott family have continued to make this iconic American classic. The Perfecto has remained pretty much unchanged in design since its inception, and is still made the same way, on the same machines, in a factory just outside NYC, and you can't say that about much these, so bravo to Schott.