Think of the proverbial bad boy and the immediate image that springs to mind is invariably one of a snarling young man, tattooed and leering as he grabs insolently at his crotch. Cigarette dangling insouciantly from his lips, he’s decked in leather and jeans; the ultimate uniform of bad boy cool. Of all modern fashion modes, it is these two that are the most closely associated with the bad boy image, intrinsically inter woven with him through the historical, pop cultural and societal zeitgeists of the 20th Century which still reverberate loudly today; take Michael Bastian’s SS12 Collection, an homage to James Dean himself.
THE FIFTIES
It all began of course with the ultimate bad boys; James Dean and Marlon Brando in that decade of emancipation and pre-emptor to the Sexual Revolution; The Fifties. Dean and his denim jeans in Rebel Without a Cause, Brando in his leather motorcycle jacket in Easy Rider, they were the stars of two of the most iconic bad boy movies of all time. Both movies defined and inspired a generation marking the beginnings of a cultural movement that changed the face of society as it was known and a change to which the fashion played no small part.
THE GREASER
In a case of life imitating art, the bad boy look (which became known as ‘the greaser’) of masculine denim and leather with slicked back hair was adopted by the mainstream. Previously the reserve of the Hell’s Angels, it marked a highly visual and definite departure from the predominantly preppy, buttoned-up mid-century styles; a society chafing at the bit to break loose of the restrictive norms imposed upon it broke free. The films and the icons were the release trigger for millions of young men (and women) who universally adopted the style of their bad boy idols to boldly announce their independence, proudly flaunting their rebelliousness, animal magnetism and sense of sexual aberration that had been hereto prohibited and hidden behind the closed doors of a prudish society.
Later the film Grease becomes the perfect reference point for this. It was a film about these young people themselves and the delinquency and rebellion of a generation of adolescents. The rebellious heroes of Grease are the bad boy T-Birds and their female counterparts the Pink Ladies; ‘gangs’ who identify through the medium of style. In the case of the T-Birds, this was the greaser look of leather jackets and denim jeans. The film portrays the moral panics of the previous generation of parents and the ever changing gender roles of the newer generation that were born out of the 1950s, shown through Sandra Dee’s transformation from preppy, sweater wearing good girl next door to a leather clad rock chick in emulation of her new found bad boy lover.
SONS OF ANARCHY
Throughout post-modern history, leather and jeans have been the sartorial herald of bad boy sub-culture and non-conformity. The Beats of the Fifties, the counter-culture movements of the Sixties; the sexual excesses of the Seventies; the punk explosion riotously ignited by the Sex Pistols, the Ramones and The Clash, the rock and heavy metal groups of the Eighties and Kurt Cobain and 90’s grunge, to the present day where our heroes and anti-heroes alike are invariably glad in denim and leather. The bad boy in his leather and jeans is a still a potent part of our 21st century consciousness and more recently we have the characters of Sons of Anarchy and the ubiquitous vampires. In fashion itself, recent years have seen a particular lean to the tattooed bad boy. Designers are adopting this tough look to sell their creations to the masses with leather jackets and denim jeans forming the foundation of their collections and therefore our own wardrobes. Most every aspiring bad boy and even non bad boy you meet is dressed in some form of variation of the denim and leather look.
From being work-wear for cowboys and uniform of WWII fly-boys, to reigning as America’s gift to world fashion, it is thanks to this Hollywood bad boy iconography and the adoption of the look by global megastars such as Elvis Presley, brands such as Levi Strauss who seized the moment and re-invented these once everyday staples, that “America gave the world two signature garments: jeans and the black leather jacket.” and with it the ultimate bad boy look.