Lewis Leathers: Models, Horsehide and the Japanese Collaborations

Great Portland Street, London, 1929. The street had been known since the early years of the century as Motor Row, with more than thirty showrooms selling cars and motorcycles, and among them stood D. Lewis, a family outfitter that had begun in the East End in 1892 making suits and raincoats. In 1929 it became a limited company there, and since the 1910s it had been making clothes for the new sports of flying and motoring. A century later its motorcycle jackets are among the most closely read leather garments in Tokyo, and more than thirty of them sit on our shelves.

Our thesis: a Lewis Leathers jacket carries three readings at once, and each answers a different question. The model number tells you what the jacket is. The label tells you when it was made. The leather tells you how it was meant to be worn. Read all three before the name, and before any famous wearer. The jacket belongs to the wider family of riders' jackets read in our guide to designer leather jackets, where Lewis Leathers stands beside the American Perfecto.

At a glance

Origin	D. Lewis, London, 1892; limited company from 1929 on Great Portland Street
Aviation brand	Aviakit, from 1930; first used as a telegram address in 1929
Name Lewis Leathers	Registered in 1960 for a range aimed at young riders
Defining jacket	The Bronx, No. 384, launched May 1956
Classic numbers	Lightning 391 and 402, Cyclone 441, Twin Track Bronx 440, Super Monza 445, Dominator 551
Revival	Designs researched and re-created by Derek Harris from 1991; Harris took over in 2003
Made	In London, each jacket by a single machinist
Japan	An office opened in Japan after 2003; collaborations with Comme des Garçons from 2002

From Motor Row to the Bronx

The limited company was run by the brothers Nathan Jones, David and Lewis Isaacs, with branches in Birmingham, Sheffield and Liverpool trading as N Jones. Its flying clothes were already sold to governments as far apart as the Netherlands, India, Belgium, South Africa and Greece, and in 1930 they took a brand name, Aviakit, short for aviation kit. During the Second World War D. Lewis made clothing for the Royal Air Force, including made-to-measure outfits for officers, and its garments were worn by the Spitfire test pilot Alex Henshaw.

Peace brought a new customer. With petrol rationed, D. Lewis sold ex-RAF clothing to demobbed motorcyclists, and in the early 1950s it began to design for them. In May 1956 it launched the Bronx, an update of a 1930s flying jacket, for the teenage market. The Wild One, Marlon Brando's film, had been kept off British screens, and the Bronx became the British answer to the Schott Perfecto. In 1960 the company registered the name Lewis Leathers for a new range of jackets aimed at young riders, and in 1962 it aligned itself with the 59 Club, the London motorcycle club, attending and sponsoring it. When mods and rockers clashed at English seaside resorts, Lewis Leathers clothing was seen on both sides.

Why a British jacket is cut differently

The difference is posture. In the mid-1950s, young British riders copied their racing heroes, crouched over the tank with their arms forward on clip-on bars. An American jacket worn that way pulled across the back, and its brass belt buckle scratched the paint. Lewis Leathers answered with expansion pleats down each side of the back and a buckle covered in leather. In our handling, those two details are the quickest way to tell a British riders' jacket from an American one across a room.

The Bronx then grew a winter brother. The Super Bronx Twin Track, shown at the Brighton motorcycle show in September 1965, added a second zip track so that the jacket could open out over bulky clothes. It was numbered 440TT and advertised as unobtainable elsewhere; from 1966 it ran beside the standard Bronx, No. 384. Later models kept the habit of numbers: the Lightning, the Cyclone, the Dominator, the Corsair, the Super Monza. The numbers are still used by the London house today, which is why the number on a jacket is the first word of its description.

Reading the label by decade

Labels are the clock. The Aviakit name was first woven into labels for flying helmets in the 1930s; after the war it appeared mostly on helmets and gloves and as a descriptive phrase in advertising, such as an Aviakit expanding back. In 1960 the Lewis Leathers script logo was born, and early labels often pair it with a small Aviakit tag.

• Around 1965 to 1966. A new, larger Aviakit label appeared inside every Lewis Leathers jacket, in black and red.
• Early 1970s. The tag changed to blue and red.
• Today. The house has returned to the black and red tag, so a black and red label alone does not make a jacket old; read it with the lining, hardware and cut.

Production places help as well. The jackets were made in Watford or St Albans at first, in Copperfield Road in East London from 1958 to 1982, in Northampton from 1982, and in London again from 1993. In our reading, a jacket whose label, zips and lining all point to the same decade is the one to trust; a mix is a question to ask, not a verdict.

Horsehide, cowhide and sheep

Every Lewis Leathers jacket is cut from a single piece of leather so that shade and thickness match, and each is sewn in London by one machinist from start to finish. The house offers several hides, and it describes them plainly. Its chrome-tanned cowhide, 1.1 to 1.3 millimetres, Italian, resists scuffing and water and needs less conditioning, but takes longer to break in. Its horsehide, of the same weight, has shorter fibres, so it creases into a finer grain and a distinct patina; it wants regular conditioning and is offered in eleven colours. Sheep is softer, needs little breaking in and suits casual wear, at the cost of less abrasion resistance.

The choice tells you about the wearer. Horsehide is the enthusiast's leather, chosen for the way it ages; cowhide is the leather for riding through weather, chosen for its resistance to scuffs and rain. The house is also clear that its jackets are classic motorcycling clothing, not certified protective equipment. Our Lexicon entry on horsehide sets the leather beside the A-2 flying jacket, the other classic horsehide jacket.

How Japan kept the jacket

The modern chapter began with a researcher. In 1991 Derek Harris began to research and re-create the classic designs, and in 1993, the year the Great Portland Street shop closed after 101 years, a small Retro Range appeared with linings, labels and hardware as found on jackets of the 1960s and 1970s. It was marketed in Japan, the United States and Britain, and it arrived just as vintage Lewis Leathers jackets were becoming sought after in Japan, prized for their ties to the rockers and the punks and often heavily customised.

Japan then became a partner. Comme des Garçons collaborated in 2002 and Junya Watanabe in 2003. When Richard Lyon retired in 2003, Harris took over the company and opened an office in Japan, run by Koji Baba, leader of 59 Club Japan. The house has since worked with Hysteric Glamour, the bag maker Porter and Erostika, the label of the artist Rockin' Jelly Bean, and our shelves also hold Lewis Leathers jackets made with Undercover and with The Real McCoy's of Kobe. In our handling, a Japanese collaboration usually keeps the Lewis number and cut and changes one thing: the paint, the lining, the leather or the hardware. Read the number first, then find the one change.

Where the record differs

Short summaries of the company name a single founder, David Isaacs, in 1892. The fuller history describes a family business, D. Lewis, that made suits and raincoats in the East End and became a limited company only in 1929, under the brothers Nathan Jones, David and Lewis Isaacs. The two accounts can both be true, but they are not the same story, and we follow the fuller one. For the same reason we date a jacket by its label, zips and lining rather than by any single founding date.

In the archive

The house keeps its jackets on the Lewis Leathers shelf, inside the wider designer leather jacket shelf. For the label clock, compare a vintage Twin Track Bronx in turquoise with its Aviakit label with a Lightning double rider from the 1970s and a Super Monza single rider from the same decade in blue. For leather, set a 391T Lightning in yellow horsehide beside a Cyclone No. 441 in navy.

For the Japanese chapter, the shelf holds a Comme des Garçons Lightning hand-painted for the Aoyama shop, a Hysteric Glamour single rider in brown, an Undercover Lightning with a chain-link lining and an Erostika Lightning 391T in black horsehide. The artist behind the last is read in our Rockin' Jelly Bean and Erostika guide, and the Kobe maker in our piece on The Real McCoy's.

Answered plainly

What does the T after a Lewis Leathers number mean?

In our handling, a T, as in 391T or 441T, marks the tight-fit version of a model, cut closer to the body than the regular fit.

Is horsehide better than cowhide?

Neither is better. Horsehide creases into a finer grain and patina and wants regular conditioning; cowhide resists scuffs and water and takes longer to break in.

How do I date a vintage Lewis Leathers jacket?

Read the label first: a large black and red Aviakit label from around 1965, blue and red from the early 1970s. Then check that the zips and lining agree.

Is the Lightning the same as the Bronx?

No. The Bronx, No. 384, launched in May 1956, is a separate model; the Lightning is numbered 391 and 402 in today's range.

Lewis Leathers made clothes for pilots, then for the boys who rode to the 59 Club, then for the punks, and Japan has kept all three chapters in its wardrobes. Read the number, then the label, then the leather, and the jacket will tell you which chapter it belongs to. That is our reading.

Further reading

• Horsehide, in the Lexicon: the leather and how it ages.
• Japanese heritage flight jackets: the flying jacket remade in Japan.
• Hysteric Glamour and the archive: the Tokyo label behind one collaboration.
• The Comme des Garçons shelf: the house that began the collaborations.
• The Rockin' Jelly Bean and Erostika collection: the artist's jackets, prints and figures.

Sources

1. Lewis Leathers, encyclopaedia entry, for D. Lewis, Aviakit, the Bronx and Twin Track, production places, the revival and the Japan office. wikipedia.org
2. Lewis Leathers, "All about Aviakit", for the labels by decade. lewisleathers.com
3. Lewis Leathers, "Custom Ordering", for the leathers, single-piece cutting and London making. lewisleathers.com
4. Lewis Leathers, men's jackets, for current model numbers. lewisleathers.com
5. Lewis Leathers x EROSTIKA, for the Erostika collaboration. lewisleathers.com

Last reviewed 15 November 2026. The Japonista Curation and Concierge Team, Tokyo, Japan.