Vintage 1973 TT Leathers Easy Rider Motorcycle Jacket, Agnewtree Ltd, Barnard Castle

1973 TT Leathers motorcycle racing jacket in original wearable condition. Fifty years on a bike. The stripe is intact, the Clix hardware runs throughout, and the lining carries the road inside it.

The hide is black and close-grained. Across the back it has held well, deep and even, the surface largely unbroken. Across the shoulders, chest and arms it has settled permanently into the shape of a rider leaning forward, the creases fixed by decades of the same position over the same machine. This is not surface wear. It is the jacket remembering its owner.

TT Leathers was founded by enduro rider Len Thwaites in Barnard Castle, County Durham, and operated under the name Agnewtree Ltd. In 1973, the year this jacket was made, the company was at the height of its early output, producing serious riding gear for serious riders, in a town that had no business making motorcycle clothing and did it anyway. The quality of the hide in the early jackets is consistently noted by collectors. This is one of them.

Three separate strips of coloured leather, white, red, blue, are stitched flush to the body, running diagonally from the right shoulder to the lower left hem. The same sequence wraps the left sleeve at the bicep. The style drew directly from the jacket Peter Fonda wore in Easy Rider, which by 1973 had moved fully from cinema into the visual language of British motorcycling. Lewis Leathers released their Racing Jacket No. 442 the same year on the same template. The colours on this jacket have held. The strips are sound.

The cut is racing short, pulled tight at the waist by a strap and buckle adjuster at each side of the hem. Both are original and functional. The hardware throughout is Clix, aluminium-toothed and correct for the period, running cleanly on every closure. Front zip, chest pocket, lower pockets, cuff zips. New-England press studs at the collar. Nothing replaced.

Open it and the lining is duck-egg blue, a plain satin weave, original. The fabric has darkened and mottled across the upper back and shoulders where oil and road residue has soaked through the leather and settled into the weave over decades. It has not moved evenly. It has pooled and shifted in irregular patches, heavier at the shoulder blades, lighter toward the lower back, the accumulated record of fifty years between a rider and a machine. The sleeves carry the same saturation, darkest at the top where contact with the leather was greatest. The inner collar is original suede, conditioned and supple, aged to a deep ochre. This is what the inside of a seriously ridden jacket looks like and it has not been touched.

The leather is sound. No cracking, no structural failure, no seam that has given. Wear is present, honest, and concentrated where it should be. The jacket has been professionally cleaned and conditioned in the workshop and every zip has been refurbished and waxed to run cleanly from end to end.

Original Clix hardware throughout. Tricolour racing stripe complete and strong. Duck-egg lining behind near-black leather, carrying everything the previous owner left in it. These things do not arrive together often.

Key Details

• 1973 TT Leathers motorcycle racing jacket, made by Agnewtree Ltd, Barnard Castle, County Durham
• Dense close-grained leather, near-black throughout
• Tricolour racing stripe, white, red, blue, original, diagonal from right shoulder to lower left hem
• Matching tricolour stripe to left sleeve at bicep
• Racing short cut with waist adjuster straps and buckles at each side of hem
• Construction consistent with Lewis Leathers Racing Jacket No. 442 of the same year
• Original Clix aluminium zips throughout, front, chest pocket, lower pockets, cuffs, professionally refurbished and waxed
• New-England press studs at collar
• Plain satin weave lining in duck-egg blue, original
• Suede inner collar, original, conditioned and supple, aged to deep ochre
• Oil saturation to lining consistent with fifty years of road use
• Professionally cleaned and conditioned in workshop
• All hardware original and functional

Garment Measurements (Laid Flat)

• Chest (armpit to armpit): 20"
• Shoulders (seam to seam): 17.3"
• Sleeve length (underarm seam to cuff): 16.5"
• Sleeve length (shoulder to cuff): 22.5"
• Back length (collar seam to hem): 24"
• Hem: 17.5"

Best suited to a 38" chest slim fitting. Please compare with a similar garment to ensure an accurate fit.