Rick Owens Cropped Jumbo Bauhaus Stooges

Horse leather is the reason to look at this one twice. Almost every leather jacket you will handle is lamb or calf, both of which are soft immediately and soft forever. Horsehide is denser and more tightly fibred, which means it starts stiffer, resists the first few wearings, and then breaks in along the lines your own body puts into it. It creases rather than crumples. Where lamb goes gradually softer all over, horsehide develops hard, bright folds at the elbow and the front of the shoulder and holds them, so a horse leather jacket after two years looks like a record of who wore it. That is a slower and less comfortable proposition than lamb, and it is the better one if you intend to keep the jacket.

The cut is the other half. This is the Stooges, the house's biker, taken short and taken large at once, so it sits high on the body while the shoulder and sleeve carry real volume. The zips are placed rather than distributed, the collar is left plain, and a belt closes the hem. Nothing about it is quiet, and nothing about it is decorated either.

We wanted one leather jacket that was not soft. Lamb and calf flatter immediately and ask nothing of the wearer. This asks something, and it gives back a surface that neither of those hides will ever develop. It is also the piece where the house's biker lineage is most legible, which is the work Rick Owens is most identified with, and if we are going to carry that we would rather carry the uncompromising version of it.

The Stooges is the Rick Owens biker jacket, named for the band, and it has been redrawn across seasons in different leathers and cuts; this is the cropped and enlarged one.

One hundred percent horse leather, made in Italy, in black. Cropped body with a belt at the hem, a classic collar, and zip detailing at the front and sleeves.

Two things are working against each other here and both need trying on. It is cropped, so it ends above where a jacket normally ends and it will change the proportion of whatever you wear under it. It is also cut jumbo, so the volume through the shoulder and sleeve is deliberate and a size down does not fix it, it just makes a large jacket into a tight large jacket. Horse leather has very little give when new and does not stretch the way lamb does, so the fit you buy is close to the fit you keep.

Over a fine knit or a plain tee, with the volume above the waist balanced by something narrow below. Because it is cropped, it wants a high trouser rather than a low one. Boots.

Not at home and not at an ordinary dry cleaner. Leather cleaning, re-oiling, and refinishing are specialist work, and between times a barely damp cloth is the whole of what smooth leather needs. Keep it off radiators and out of long sun, and hang it on a broad hanger. Our care guidance covers conditioning, and its position is that less is safer than more.

For the same house in shearling, the Bauhaus Jacket. In calf, the Brad Jacket. In lamb, the Giacca Classic Biker Jacket and the Giacca In Pelle Naska Biker. Everything we currently hold from Rick Owens is listed together.