Leather Jackets Are For Life

Leather jackets are for life, and not just for Christmas. They never go out of fashion and will always give you that warm comfortable feeling, every time you slip it on. Leather is so hard wearing and impervious to most normally occurring substances that jackets last longer and remain looking new, or comfortably lived in at least, than any other piece of clothing.

Wise grandmothers everywhere will tell you that if you don’t look after the things you have, then you don’t deserve to have them in the first place. So it is with good leather jackets. You can wear them in all seasons and with all styles of clothes from casual to formal, and they will look great. But there will come a time when they get a tear or two and or a stain or two. But this this is nothing to dread because leather is like a living thing and helps to repair itself, if you go about it in the correct way.

Because of its innate strength and durability leather can be repaired so that damage is almost invisible. This is easier with small rips and punctures. Anything less than two centimetres in length or diameter can be invisibly mended, by applying a little knowledge and skill. For very small punctures for example from a nail or ball point, you should gently hammer the inside surface and seal it with a drop of Super Glue. This prevents the gap from re-opening. Of course it is quite modern look to have designer tears and rips, strategically placed on your leather jacket. So any kind of fixing can be worn without loss of style.

 Larger holes and rips can also be repaired at home. The only things you need for a complete leather jacket repair kit is a pair of good scissors, pointed and sharp, plus a small flat-head hammer, clean or ideally new and reserved exclusively for this purpose. Also use a sheet of white paper and a pencil, some Super Glue or special ‘garment glue’, available at good craft shops and some small swatches of gauze-like material. Of course you may need a patch of leather that matches your jacket. You can always take this from the lining or inside a pocket, or get down to a good fabric store for a swatch. Last but not least you will need some tea or beer or wine for refreshment purposes while you work.

 The steps for repairing are as follows; 1) Cut out closely around the offending hole, following the shape of it to give it a ‘clean’ edge. 2) Put the paper under the hole and draw a precise outline of it with the pencil. 3) Use this template of the damaged area to cut out an exact patch from the swatch you have. (top tip is to cut slightly outside of the line because our tendency is to always cut small). 4) Fill the hole with your patch and hammer it into place to flatten the joins. 5) Cut a lining patch of gauze about 2 cm’s bigger all round than the patch. 6) Cover the whole area with glue and place the material patch over it so as to hold the patch in place. Put something heavy on the patch until the glue sets hard and the patch is held invisibly in place. ‘Et voila’, your beautiful leather jacket is good as new.