NORFOLK, Va. — Just as suits of armor have routinely lined museum halls over the years, the 20th-century equivalent of protection, status and cool for riders of other kinds of horses is getting its due.
“Worn To Be Wild,” a collection of more than 50 leather jackets worn by fighter pilots, motorcyclists, rock stars, run-of-the-mill celebrities and fashionistas, is on display at the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk.
Created by the Experience Music Project in Seattle and the Harley-Davidson Museum in Milwaukee, the exhibit that chronicles the history of the iconic look is wrapping up its two-year, seven-city tour in Norfolk.
Fashioned first as protective warmth for pilots in World War I, long leather jackets were shortened and adapted with wind-fighting belts, buckles and asymmetrical zippers for motorcyclists, who have made it part of their identity ever since.
Sometime in the 1950s, shortly after Marlon Brando donned one in “The Wild One,” it became a more widely adopted cloak of cool for rock pioneers and rebels of every stripe.
The degree of outlaw varied, though: An early jacket from Elvis Presley, for example, was purchased at J.C. Penney.
It’s displayed with one of Presley’s own motorcycles, a 1956 Harley-Davidson Model KH, one of three bikes in the show. The oldest one is a 1920 Harley-Davidson Model J accompanying a longer leather coat of the era.
(A third bike allows museumgoers to pose, try on a jacket and take a selfie).
Rock ‘n’ roll remains a mainstay in leather, according to the display, with coats from Norfolk native Gene Vincent,the silver-painted jacket of X guitarist Billy Zoom and the typically mistreated togs of Sid Vicious.
Other Hollywood jackets include the coat worn by Arnold Schwarzenegger in “Terminator 2” and the one sported by Rooney Mara in “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.”
Fashion designers have had their way with the jacket over the years as well, and there are examples on display from Jean Paul Gaultier and Gianni Versace to one from Jeremy Scott wearing a familiar Keith Haring design.
The wartime connections of the coat are seen in a World War II-era brown bomber jacket adorned with a bomb-riding pinup on the back.
