The Northern Dream Jacket Starts With the Hide
The Northern Dream Jacket Starts With the Hide
A great leather jacket is decided before anyone threads a needle.
The hide comes first
A leather jacket is a hide before it is anything else. The cut comes later. The lining comes later. The snaps come last. The hide decides how the jacket feels the first time it goes on and how it looks twenty years from now. So the Northern Dream starts in Chicago, at the Horween tannery.
Isidore Horween opened his tannery in Chicago in 1905. In 1920 it moved into the building on North Elston Avenue where it still works today. The same family has run it for five generations, and it is one of the oldest tanneries in the country that has never stopped. Since 1941 the leather on every official NFL football has come out of that building. That is the kind of place I want my leather to come from.
Why horsehide
Horsehide has a different fiber structure from cowhide. The tannery says it is more abrasion resistant, and that the front of the horse was the traditional cut for jackets because it is tough and thin. Tough and thin is exactly what a jacket wants. It moves with the body and it lasts.
The Army learned this early. In 1931 the Army Air Corps standardized the A-2 flight jacket, and the specification called for horsehide. The Smithsonian keeps one in its collection, in seal brown horsehide. Pilots wore that jacket through the Second World War, and it became the leather jacket a whole country carried in its mind.
Tanned slowly
The Northern Dream is cut from vegetable tanned horsehide. Vegetable tanning uses the tannins in bark and wood. It is the old way and it takes time. It gives the leather a firm hand and a color that deepens with light and with wear. Horween and I worked out the tan for this jacket together. There is also a tea dyed version, and it ages in its own warm direction.
What the hide carries
Inside, the body and the collar are lined with long curl lambskin from northern British Columbia. A size medium takes four sheepskins. The sleeves are lined with my diamond quilting, made in Japan, so the jacket slides on easily over a sweater. The snaps are Black Bear Brand YKK.
The jacket is made in Seattle. One craftsman sews each one from start to finish, one at a time, and each one takes a full day. Production runs about 120 days. The jacket is made to order in stock sizing.
When to find it
The next preorder for the Northern Dream opens October 13. Leather preorder windows open only three or four times a year, and between them there is no way to get one. If you want to see the jacket and feel the lambskin first, you can book a studio appointment.
Horsehide takes the shape of the person wearing it. The creases settle where the arms bend. The color moves through the seasons. It is a jacket to keep, and one day to pass down.
A Way Of Life.
Shop the Story
The Northern Dream Jacket, Horween Horsehide with Long Curl Sheepskin
The Northern Dream Jacket, Tea Dyed Horween Horsehide
The Northern Dream Reversible Vest
Related Reading
The Western Jacket, and the Chicago Tannery That Makes the Leather