Revive Restore Vintage

Vintage 1930s German Horsehide Leather Interwar Alpine Jacket

Name: Vintage 1930s German Horsehide Leather Interwar Alpine Jacket
Brand: Revive Restore Vintage
SKU: EB5065
Price: 495.00 GBP
Availability: InStock

£495.00 GBP

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A German horsehide leather jacket in deep chocolate brown, single-breasted and zip-fronted, dating almost certainly to the late 1930s or early 1940s. The construction, hardware, and leather all point firmly to serious German manufacture, a quality piece built for active outdoor use and made to last.

To understand this jacket it helps to understand the world it came from. Germany in the 1930s had a deeply embedded culture of outdoor sport and mountain activity. Skiing, hiking, and alpine pursuits were not leisure activities for the few but a central part of working and social life for a broad section of the population. The jacket built for that world had to perform. It needed to block wind, resist abrasion, move with the body, and survive repeated hard use in all conditions. Horsehide, with its exceptional density, natural water resistance, and ability to outlast virtually every other leather, was the material of choice for anyone who took their outerwear seriously.

This jacket carries every detail of that tradition. The cut is relatively short and close, designed to move rather than to drape. The elasticated rear waist panel cinches the jacket to the body without hardware, keeping it anchored during physical activity. The single angled chest pocket is positioned to be reached without removing a glove. The two lower front zip pockets each carry original leather pull tabs. Nothing in the construction is decorative. Every detail exists because it was needed.

The zips are the story. The front closure carries a Zipp branded slider with its distinctive oval stamp, and the chest pocket carries a Ries branded zip, both with original leather pull tabs. Ries was one of the principal German zip manufacturers of the interwar and early post-war period, standard specification on serious German leather outerwear of this era. The presence of both Zipp and Ries hardware on a single garment confirms German manufacture without question and places this jacket precisely within its period.

The leather is horsehide. The grain is dense and tight, with a characteristic rigidity and depth that cowhide or goatskin simply does not produce. The hide is dyed in a deep chocolate brown, fading through to warm tan and copper at every stress point, across the shoulders, through the sleeve seams, at the collar and cuffs, producing a patina of extraordinary tonal variation that only horsehide develops in this way. The surface has not been restored or artificially treated. What is visible is what the leather has become through decades of use alone.

The collar is a flat point style sitting close to the neck. The sleeves taper to plain cuffs and the shoulder construction is structured and square in the manner of the period. The interior lining was professionally replaced at some point during the jacket's life, most likely by a previous owner who valued it enough to have the work done properly, and it remains fully intact. A leather-bound internal chest pocket is present and functional.

The condition of the leather and structure is sound. The horsehide has survived exceptionally well. Surface wear is present at the shoulders and collar, consistent with the age and use of the piece, and is photographed in full. All zips have been professionally refurbished and lubricated in the workshop and now run correctly from end to end. The jacket has been cleaned and lightly conditioned in house. The history is in the leather itself.