'80s-Era Leather Bomber Jackets Are Making a Swift Comeback

We have lift-off: the leather bomber jacket trend is flying high, cruising across the fashion circuit, and showing no sign of descending anytime soon.

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 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 preeminent fall 2024 trend with enough momentum to carry into winter and spring 2025, too.

Let’s start with the recent Fashion Month street style, peppered with flight-ready leather jacket outfits. Marie Claire’s editor-in-chief, Nikki Ogunnaike, wore a luscious black bomber from outerwear label Shoreditch Ski Club’s collaboration with AGOLDE (yes, the brand behind your trusty blue jeans) during her days at Milan Fashion Week. 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.

Before it was a see-now, buy-now fall jacket fashion editors were fawning over, the 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—including Bella Hadid, who endorsed the bomber jacket trend at Paris Fashion Week, with stylist Molly Dickson putting the supermodel in a sturdy Saint Laurent style, pinstripe pants, and a plunge neckline top.

Because, like those who wear it, the leather bomber jacket is limitless with its versatility. Hailey Bieber wears it as an unexpected top layer in her fall fashion; Bieber paired her leather jacket with yoga pants and kitten heels for a recent church service (yes, you read that correctly) and, just last week, with wide-leg leather trousers for a sushi date with Justin Bieber.

Saint Laurent creative director Anthony Vaccarello agrees with Bieber. The designer showed his fondness for an '80s-era leather bomber jacket in the fashion house's Spring 2025 show, iterating on the silhouette in matte black and brown leather and caramel suede and pairing it with supersized suits and bohemian maxi dresses.

The lesson here, as presented by Bieber, Vaccarello, and the bomber-clad cohort at Fashion Month, is that the leather jacket works in any context you want it to. On top of a cashmere sweater and tailored maxi skirt, it provides a just-right amount of edge. With a floral, Saint Laurent-style 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.