Blame it on Marlon Brando—or Pharell. Or maybe Kim Kardashian.
The former’s 1953 portrayal of Johnny Stabler in The Wild One is widely seen as the origin story of motorcycle style—the sort of splash that created the ripples still rolling out in the form of biker jackets and jeans and tall, sturdy black leather boots. What Brando personified, of course, was the outlaw, the iconic rebel, with or without a cause. (When a local girl asks Stabler what he’s rebelling against, he famously responds: “Whaddya got?”)
What began as mere protective gear in the form of Brando’s Schott Perfecto One Star studded leather jacket has become the prime mover of an entire ethos, industry, world view, and way of life. But if the mythology and iconography of biker rebellion are so simple as to be fixed in stone, the state of the art of that protective gear is an ever-evolving, highly engineered terrain, with everyone from racers to recreational riders now donning wildly colored, custom-fitted leather suits and jackets equipped with titanium skid plates at shoulders, knees, and elbows.
And while it’s a bit hazy as to exactly when style-forward early adopters began wearing this functional, highly technical gear away from the motorcycle as a style flex, it’s easy to see Pharell as a kind of canary in the high-vis coal mine: His evolution from bespoke classic biker jacket in the summer of 2015 to full-on racing leathers with an articulated leather skeleton sewn onto the outside a mere 18 months later was a kind of sartorial marker. We soon witnessed Rihanna and A$AP Rocky, Billie Eilish, Kim Gordon, and Justin Bieber, among many, many others—you, maybe?—in moto jackets and motocross pants and armored racing gloves and flamboyant racing jerseys, mainly by Alpinestars, a company headquartered in the tiny mountain town of Asolo, in the Veneto region of Italy.
Founded in 1963 by Sante Mazzarolo to manufacture hiking boots, Alpinestars soon morphed into making boots for skiing and motocross racing. Sixty-one years later, with Sante’s son Gabriele now running the operation, you’ll see their radically engineered, safety-centric apparel and footwear on Formula 1 and NASCAR drivers, MotoGP riders, motocross professionals, recreational motorcyclists—and, yeah, Kim Kardashian.
If the broader fashion world didn’t yet know about Alpinestars, the leaked photos of Kardashian stepping out in an oversized couture moto jacket on the eve of Balenciaga’s Paris show last October solved that. The piece she wore was the first collaboration between Balenciaga and Alpinestars RSRV, a new unisex luxury streetwear brand designed by Denise Focil that launches tomorrow at 10 am EST with a debut capsule of nine fashion pieces, each of them constructed from deadstock Alpinestars racing fabrics.
“Cool people pushing boundaries have been wearing motorcycle apparel forever,” Focil tells me over dinner in Austin, Texas during a break in the recent MotoGP race weekend. “But while there isn't anything novel about that, it also tells you that this isn't going anywhere. The recent thing with celebrities and hip-hop stars and style-forward people wearing Alpinestars protective exoskeletons and very loud motorcycle apparel onstage, and in music videos—it seemed to take off organically. I mean, we learned a while ago that Drake had been buying things from us online to wear on his tour, and we reached out to ask him if he wanted anything custom-made, and he politely declined! He said he likes the off-the-rack pieces. That told us a lot about what we could do—this wasn’t about chasing a trend.”
Motorsports, of course, has been having more than a moment in the sun and on the world’s runways in recent years: In addition to Balenciaga, Tom Ford, Chanel, Louis Vuitton, and Marc Jacobs—merely for starters—have all done takes on moto chic.
“Sometimes it seems like there isn't a luxury brand that isn't doing motorcycle gloves on the runway, or motorcycle jackets, or boots,” says Focil, who founded and has designed the sustainable-leather brand AS by DF for fifteen years. “But we’re doing something that no one out there is doing, and it’s forging a new playground for fashion. We're trying to deliver that sensation of freedom and rebellion to a person who’s maybe never been on a motorcycle, but thinks that the idea and the lifestyle is something that they identify with.”
The nine pieces in the first capsule, Inception, start with something as simple as a balaclava. “We took a Formula One balaclava, which is certified Nomex flame-resistant to protect drivers who may have crashed, or whose cars have caught on fire, and we reconstructed the bottom part so it can be tied as a bandana,” Focil says. You can wear the piece as a balaclava, or you can wear it as a bandana.”
On the other end of the complexity scale is the Racecraft leather jacket, which is made from deadstock MotoGP race-grade leather. “We recreated some vintage-feeling patches on the jacket, and the fit is the exact same fit of the 1999 Dyno jacket [a landmark in motorcycle jacket design], which was the first motorcycle jacket that we ever made at Alpinestars. It's a little boxy, oversized, not fitted— today’s racing jackets are really perfectly tailored for the bike and the position; this was just cool and oversized.” Crucially, like the rest of the collection, the piece doesn't have the kind of protectors found in actual Alpinestars protective gear—none of RSRV is meant to be worn on a motorcycle—but it’s every bit as authentic in every other way.
This last part may need some explaining: While the hat and the hoodie in the collection do incorporate protective gear—in the case of the hat, there’s a scraped-and-scuffed elbow or knee slider from crashed rider in a MotoGP race molded into each piece (“It's like carrying around a little piece of racing history,” Focil says)—they’re more about form than function. “Every piece is handmade in Italy—the entire capsule—by our own factories that make our racing equipment,” Focil says. “It’s a very couture approach.”
There’s also a long-sleeve T-shirt made from technical F1 Nomex material and a short-sleeve T-shirt inspired by Alpinestars’ motocross jerseys. Prices range from $285 for the Shield Cap to $2500 for the Race Craft jacket.
And while it’s too soon to know whether or not Kim Kardashian will be stepping out in the new line, leaked photos of everyone from former MotoGP world champion Fabio Quarteraro to model (and motorcycle-racing enthusiast) Jordan Rand in RSRV have already created a tsunami of anticipation.
As for the future of RSRV? “We'll continue doing high-level collaborations with artists and brands, and continue to push boundaries,” Focil says. “There are certain things I can't talk about, but it’s an ongoing effort.”
Inception, the first RSRV collection, goes live tomorrow morning at 10 am ET.