’80s-Era Leather Bombers Are the Season’s It Coat Trend

We have lift-off: a leather bomber jacket trend is flying high, cruising across the fashion circuit with no sign of descent.

It’s rare for fashion folks to come together and co-sign one silhouette as the best leather jacket of the season. The leather outerwear market is typically a mixed bag; fashion purists are partial to classic moto jackets, while prepsters defend their leather blazers as if they’re still active in their high school debate club. But the season's best leather bomber jackets bring the style set together in a rare moment of unity to agree that, without question, the aviator style is a fall 2024 trend with enough momentum to carry through as a winter and spring 2025 trend, too.

Fashion Month street style—always an incubator for the pieces everyone else will soon be wearing—was the first sign that the bomber trend was here for the long haul. During Milan Fashion Week, Marie Claire’s editor-in-chief, Nikki Ogunnaike, wore her tailored black bomber to runway shows at Gucci, Ferragamo, and Prada. In New York, Jalil Johnson, a street style star with a discerning eye for It pieces, “fell somewhat head over heels” for the Auralee bomber that Puck fashion journalist Lauren Sherman wore to the Tory Buch show—so much so that Johnson snagged a similar L.L.Bean style on a secondhand site a few days later.

Then came Bella Hadid, who endorsed the bomber jacket trend at Paris Fashion Week a few short days later, with stylist Molly Dickson putting the supermodel in a big and baggy Saint Laurent style.

Hadid's off-duty outfit was a sneak peek at what would come in Saint Laurent's Spring 2025 show (and a nudge-nudge, wink-wink for Hadid's impending return to the runway). Creative director Anthony Vaccarello expressed his fondness for an '80s-era leather bomber jacket by iterating on the silhouette in matte black and brown leather and caramel suede, pairing it with supersized suits and bohemian maxi dresses.

Vaccarello's leather jacket outfits on the Paris runway were surprising and fresh, signaling that this take on the bomber jacket trend was about making a familiar favorite feel new enough for the now.

His rogue stylings seemingly became a reference for Hailey Bieber, who continues to wear leather bombers as an unexpected top layer in her fall fashion. Bieber paired her Saint Laurent leather jacket with yoga pants and kitten heels for a recent church service (yes, you read that correctly), with wide-leg leather trousers for a sushi date with Justin Bieber, and in a very autumnal all-chocolate-brown outfit earlier in October.

Before it was a see-now, buy-now fall jacket fashion editors and stars were fawning over, the leather bomber was a piece of utility outerwear designed in the 1910s to keep U.S. Air Force fighter pilots warm. From then on, the silhouette has circulated throughout the mainstream and formed a well-rounded fan club, becoming a favorite of 1950s rockabillies, 1980s punks, and now, 2024’s crowd of cool girls—perhaps inspired by her best friend Bieber, Kendall Jenner just wore a bomber jacket made of puffed-up, dark chocolate-colored leather for a night out in mid-November.

The lesson here, as presented by Bieber, Jenner, Vaccarello, and the bomber-clad cohort at Fashion Month, is that the rugged jacket works in any context you want it to. Because, like those who wear it, a leather bomber is limitless in its versatility. On top of a cashmere sweater and tailored maxi skirt, it provides a just-right amount of edge. With a floral, Saint Laurent-style maxi dress, a leather bomber is so wrong that it becomes right (you've heard of TikTok’s “wrong shoe theory;” now, get ready for the “wrong jacket theory”).

Unlike a moto jacket or leather blazer—which come with strong style connotations that can sway an outfit one way or another (the former, a hit-the-highway biker; the latter, a prep school dropout)—a leather bomber jacket is more of a vibe-shifter. You're the plane's pilot, with an entire runway to pick up speed. And the best fashion trends are always the ones that let you stay in control.