Why Do Bikers Wear Leather Chaps? A Short Cultural History

Bikers wear leather chaps because the garment was made for riders in the first place: seatless leather leggings worn over trousers to shield the legs from weather and injury. Motorcyclists kept them for wind, cold and some scrape protection, and over the decades chaps also became part of how bikers look and who they are. Here is how a ranch garment ended up in biker culture.

From the saddle to the motorcycle

Chaps began in Mexico, out of Spanish riding and ranching traditions. They appeared around the late 1830s and early 1840s and replaced leather flaps that hung from the saddle. The name comes from chaparreras, probably after chaparro, the brush riders pushed through, or chaparrón, a sudden downpour.

Americans shortened the word to "chaps." The straight-legged "shotgun" style, the earliest worn by Texas cowboys, blocks wind and holds in heat, and it was in wide use by the late 1870s. Motorcycle chaps are a version of those shotgun chaps, usually smooth leather with side zips.

Why riders kept them

The reasons a horseman needed chaps carried over to the motorcycle. They are popular in biker culture for protection from wind and cold, and they give partial protection from cuts and scrapes, the abrasion of a fall. They are not armor, and at least one maker says so on its product page.

What chaps came to mean

After 1947, the Hollister rally and The Wild One (1953) popularized the outlaw image of bikers as misfits. The look on screen was Brando's Perfecto-style jacket and tilted cap. Chaps followed a different route: according to a cultural history in i-D, chaps came to be linked with outlaw motorcycle clubs as motorcycles replaced horses.

The same history traces a second line. After World War II, gay motorcycle clubs such as the Satyrs, founded in Los Angeles in 1954, gave queer men a discreet place to meet. The leather look they wore drew on Brando's image. In the leather subculture, chaps are often worn for display rather than protection.

Fashion has borrowed them since, on runways for Loewe and Versace, though chaps never became everyday menswear.

Do real bikers wear chaps?

Some riders wear them on every ride and some never do. Wearing chaps is a personal choice, not a test of whether someone is a "real" biker.

Where to go next

• How to place patches on the front of a biker vest
• What bikers call their vest
• Understanding motorcycle club leathers and their symbols

If you want a pair, Leather Collection leather chaps are cut from 1.1 to 1.3 mm cowhide with a full-length side zip and an adjustable waist, made to order in standard or custom sizes.