The cast of Grease While it’s hard to classify any sort of musical as “badass,” the cast members of this movie broke the mold for traditional leather jacket wearers, also opening up the fashion statement as a choice for both men and women. Released in 1978, the film centers around two classmates at Rydell High in the year 1959. Amid 110 minutes of choreographed song and dance, the plot tells a love story between Danny Zuko, played by John Travolta, and Sandy Olsson, played by Olivia Newton-John, who had a fling after meeting on vacation the summer before Sandy would unknowingly enroll at Rydell. Zuko’s rough and tough clique, the T-Birds, all sport black leather jackets throughout the entire movie, while Sandy put in her good girl place, at times ridiculed by other students. In the final scene, Sandy shows up in her own all black leather ensemble, flipping the script on Zuko and the fashion world.James Dean James Dean, best known for his lead role in the film Rebel Without A Cause in which a red leather jacket was displayed prominently as part of his ward robe, will forever have a tinge of leather associated with his lasting image. Though he died in a car crash at the young age of 24, Dean’s legacy lives on in Hollywood to this day. Believed by many reports to be bisexual, Dean helped popularize the look among those of all orientations. Read more on this Article!

Badass, cool guy, biker dude a simple leather jacket can say a lot of things about your personality. As arguably the most iconically fashionable garment in American TV & movie history, the leather jacket has meant a lot of things to many different people, largely thanks to the memorable characters (both fictional characters and real celebrities almost too eccentric for believable fiction) to don one, whether on screen or in the pages of a magazine. Without further ado, these are our picks for the most famous leather jackets in history.Fonzie, Happy Days Arthur “The Fonz” Fonzarelli actually encompasses all three of the aforementioned leather clad stereotypes. Originally written as a secondary character in the Happy Days series, the Fonzie’s popularity grew so quickly writers soon made him a lead character on the show. Fonzie was quite simply the all-around epitome of cool. Even actor Henry Winkler, who played Fonzie, admitted “The Fonz was everybody I wasn’t. He was everybody I wanted to be.” Though Happy Days aired from the mid 70′s to mid 80′s, it depicted times in the 50′s and 60′s, arguably the leather jacket’s heyday. Today, Fonzie’s leather jacket is on display in the Smithsonian Institute. Read more on this Article!