For as long as I can remember, I've had some style of a black leather—or faux leather—jacket hanging in my closet. I wore them with everything: on top of hoodies, turtlenecks, and
white T-shirts, with jeans, leggings, skirts, and more. Now, though, 26 years and countless black leather jackets later, my loyalty to the classic style has started to wane, mostly because of another leather jacket color that's far less ubiquitous.
More and more, designers are ditching plain black for a range of warm and luxurious shades of brown when crafting their leather outerwear. And after seeing a mix of brown leather blazers, puffers, shearling jackets, and trenches on the street style scene these last few seasons, it dawned on me that perhaps my black leather selection wasn't the end game after all. Brown leather, however, is a different story.
Ahead, shop the brown leather jackets that made me hang up my more than 26-year-long relationship with black ones.