‘Born cool’ – why the varsity jacket is still leader of the pack

There are few items of clothing as iconic – or as purely American – as the classic varsity jacket. Yet, lately, it has been making a comeback, thanks in part to Italian powerhouse Prada, who featured a chic all-leather take on it at Milan fashion week in February. It has also been a central piece in much-hyped recent collaborations between Gap and Palace, and Supreme and MM6 Maison Margiela. Not even the digital space is safe: Louis Vuitton has been selling a “phygital” – AKA an NFT (non-fungible token) – version of a varsity jacket from the Pharrell-designed FW24 collection – yours to have and not hold for nearly £7,000.

Instantly recognisable thanks to its two-tone leather sleeves and boiled wool body, the varsity jacket has served as a symbol of jock masculinity in classic films such as Teen Wolf and The Breakfast Club, and was worn onstage by Michael Jackson and more recently has been adopted by celebrities from Rihanna to Bella Hadid.

It’s a style that’s American as apple pie – so why is it making a comeback the world over?

The varsity jacket is “an odd bird in the world in fashion” for the way it has stayed so present in style trends over the past century even as it’s “retained its original meaning,” says Deirdre Clemente, historian and curator of 20th-century American material culture at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

The story of the varsity jacket is, she says, inherently a story about technology. The garment has its origins in the “letterman” sweater – a knitted jumper featuring an initial taken from a school that was made with new kinds of knitting machines that could make items very fast. Originally only given to elite sportsmen at Ivy League colleges in the late-1800s and early-1900s, “it really began as an elite marker of sportsmanship,” Clemente says.

By the 1940s, the jacket had replaced the sweater and it began to crop up on high-school campuses. By the 50s and 60s, new manufacturing technology meant that a variety of business could produce varsity jackets; high-street fashion brands realised that “we can just make these things, they don’t have to have any cultural meanings,” says Clemente. By the 60s and 70s, the letterman had “become a retro fashion statement”, and, in the 80s, alongside the rise of sportswear, companies began to make jackets that alluded to varsity style but featured random images and patches.

“Starting about mid-century, as individualism in fashion comes to the fore, people started to use the jacket ironically,” says Clemente. “[People would] wear it with dirty jeans – it wasn’t part of distinguishing who you are as an extra special athlete, it was more a way of distinguishing a style.”

For much of its history, the letterman jacket was not only an exclusively male item, but also an extremely white item. “Who was not going to Harvard and lettering in golf? The hispanic kid, the Black kid, the Asian kid. These universities were not open grounds for these students,” says Clemente.

Of course, by the 90s, everyone was wearing letterman jackets, and the item had been fully adopted into hip-hop fashion, alongside preppy brands such as Polo and Tommy Hilfiger, classic American styles associated with wealth and class. Artists such as Diddy and Salt-N-Pepa were known to wear varsity jackets, with the latter wearing iconic all-leather lettermans, designed by Dapper Dan, in their 1987 video for Push It.

New York-based stylist Marissa Pelly says she has always had a strong association between varsity jackets and hip-hop style. “[I] was always seeing really cool rappers and artists rocking varsity jackets onstage or on the street – it was always just like, anyone who was anybody in any place in society, I feel like, was wearing a varsity jacket.”

Pelly believes that a varsity still works as a symbolic garment in these spaces: “I think it gives captain vibes, leader of the pack vibes, but at the same time, especially in hip-hop, it can give a rookie vibe.”

Brands certainly seem to understand the totemic appeal of the varsity: Louis Vuitton’s NFT version works just as well as a digital representation as, say, the brand’s iconic Speedy bag would, because varsity jackets are easy to spot from a mile away and come pre-loaded with historical significance and cultural resonance.

Pelly believes the resurgence of the varsity jacket is tied to the fact that it can be “a really great form of self-expression” – a desirable idea for labels trying to make customers feel as if they’re part of an elite club. She sees cult brands such as Aimé Leon Dore as having spearheaded the latest revival. “They’re not just trying to sell a product – they’re trying to sell a lifestyle, and trying to sell a community that you would want to be a part of.”

Other labels are going a little deeper: Wales Bonner’s varsity jackets pay tribute to the historically Black Howard University and the first Congress of Black Writers and Artists held at the Sorbonne in 1956; one features studs inspired by the kora, a west African string instrument.

For other brands, such as Gap x Palace, the reason for adopting the garment might be a little more utilitarian. “A varsity jacket is a really easy piece when you want to do a collab,” says Pelly. “You can easily be like, ‘Oh, let’s just put out a varsity jacket and put our patch on it and call it a day.”

The varsity jacket’s perpetual spot at the heart of American style is easy to understand. “It keeps coming back because it was born cool, right?” says Clemente. The guys wearing them at Harvard were the cool kids writing the rules – these guys in the Ivy League set the trends for American menswear for the first 50 years of fashion,” she says. “It’s perennially cool.”