Grizzly Jacket - Long Forgotten leather & Fur Masterpiece, You Didn't Know You Needed
- terryvick
- 10 hours ago
- 3 min read
A Grizzly Jacket, which is the more modern term for thee outer garments, is traditionally a leather blouson ( sort of a vest ) with mouton or fur front/ back panels and collar.
Traditionally made from horsehide with mouton or other exotic to typical , hair-on skin trims , hides and accents. Other period correct names for this garment are all over the place,..terms like "Cossack jacket, Beaver Fur Jacket and simply Fur Blouson are typical.
The silhouette of the jackets, depending on make and model often ranged from bulkier renditions as per the my own primitive and rudimentary to more trim blousons reminiscent of the Cossack jacket. The key here is the furry element!
Grizzly jackets close with zips or button plackets, and commonly have a belt at the waist and adjustable belted cuffs, as well as slash or patch pockets.
at the turn of the 20th Century, cars and motorized transport was still rare and people either got around on horseback or drove along in open-air cars without any climate control. Fur was a common outer wear material along with leather. Fur had been a gender neutral choice for warmth against the winter cold and elements going back thousands of years,.but it was an American Company called Summit, who around 1910 released a garment that resembles that jacket we see today.
Before that time,..men would have been wearing fur as a more vest type structured garment. The term "jacket" itself has an interesting history. It comes from the history of a 14th-17th century upper garment called a "doublet" which was a very light and thin long sleeved upper garment you have most likely seen in a performance of Romeo & Juliet or other Shakespean plays. Men would frequently wear a fur and leather vest type garment over their doublet in colder climates or during winter. These would evolve into "little coats" or in french "jaquette" and evolve into fully sleeved "jackets' which,.off course were commonly leather and or fur.
Therefore,.one might be able to make an argument that Summit's original design might have actually introduced the modern "jacket" to the masses. Certainly it was an industry boon and soon all manor of other clothing and outdoors manufacturers where making their own versions and usually calling the same basic design by a different name.
For example, a company known as Edes Tanning had originally made tanned horse hise blankets for passengers to wear on their pals while riding in horse drawn carts or early automobiles. However,.they soon started producing a nearly mid-thigh length long haired coat it called its "fur blouse" in the early 1920's
My first prototype , handmade "Grizzly was actually a denim #denimtruckerjacket,..instead of the usual leather. More of a proof of concept for me,..LoL
So btw the outset of World War two,..the whole trend had subsided and faded. Leather,. and Fur,.like so many other products was extremely scare due to war time use and manufacturers had to cease production of products that used anything set aside for the war effort. And so the beautiful #grizlyjacket,.went the wams way as hats would in decades to come. Men simply stopped wearing them. Leather jackets as a whole would indeed survive and remain very popular. However,.their fur clad progenitors would all but dissapear from populr culture until mid-century obsessed collectors would rediscover them and subsequently refer to them under the blanket term "grizzly Jackets"!
Comments