Legit Aero Label?

[Leatheradmirer]

Hello everyone!

Currently i'm looking for a replacement for my Aero Leather jacket (mine is currenty in Steerhide) and wanted to have a FQHH for myself.

I got one that interested me, but has different label than other Aero (?). Tried to look it up everywhere but all I'm seeing are just bunch of Japanese marketplace site listings. (Third picture is from japanese site listing)

I personally find that the patina on the jacket looks beautiful (love that color variation). But is the label legit Aero? And the zipper puller leather looked a tad too long doesn't it? (And doesn't look to have the "Aero" markings on it)

Would love to hear any info on this particular label!

 

[chillinginthenameof]

That's a legit and very nice Aero. I have an Aero Highwayman in the same colour with the same label but in steerhide. If i recall i think it's a 90s label but i could be wrong on that.

 

[Bennarion]

This is an original Aero with a standard label

 

[l0fielectronic]

There is a photo of this label on the Aero label thread here in a photo taken at Aero... https://www.thefedoralounge.com/threads/aero-labels.88549/page-3#post-2695541


A shame a lot of the images in that thread are gone. There is also a bunch of working label images here for anyone finding this thread in future... https://www.vintageleatherjackets.org/threads/aero-thunder-bay-label.32453/

Has anyone ever seen a fake Aero label? I've know I've seen Aero labels placed in non Aero jackets but I can't recall ever hearing of fake labels?

 

[Zoro]

Has anyone ever seen a fake Aero label? I've know I've seen Aero labels placed in non Aero jackets but I can't recall ever hearing of fake labels?

It's not even worth the effort. Fakes are meant to basically imply you are able to afford recognizable items that are seen as status symbols, thus basically any "mainstream" brand from Nike to Louis Vuitton.

There's no point in faking an Aero (beyond some bait and switch) as your average person does not even of Aero's existence and the (few) people who do can tell at a glance if it is real or not. Also, in general, it is very uncommon to see fakes of leather clothes other than sneakers that use cheap leather with plastic coating anyways. It gets very hard to really cut down on the price compared with originals to a point that it defeats paying more for the real thing.

 

[Edward]

Has anyone ever seen a fake Aero label? I've know I've seen Aero labels placed in non Aero jackets but I can't recall ever hearing of fake labels?

No, never seen a fake label. The only controversies I've seen around Aero labels were Sam Walker and Will Lauder.

The Will Lauder labels issue came up in his criminal trial; a stack of Aero jacket labels were recovered amongst the well over £100,000 retail-worth of Aero stock found in his house. There was much speculation at the time, as you can imagine, as to what the intention was for those labels, though no evidence has ever come up of any being used to pass off a jacket not made in the Aero factory as being an Aero product. (For reference for those who want to read it, a full, contemporaneous report of the trial by a trained reporter present in court was posted here: https://www.thefedoralounge.com/threads/aero-trial-narrative.82006/ .)

Sam Walker (there's a thread on this somewhere... ah, yes: https://www.thefedoralounge.com/threads/whats-the-real-deal-with-sam-walker-jackets.69594/) was a London-based Aero stockist back in the day that at some point stopped stocking Aeros and started selling jackets that copied the Aero patterns, labelled as Sam Walker. It's common to see people selling Sam Walker jackets on eBay claiming them to have been "made by Aero for Sam Walker". I don't believe they're all being fraudulent - it's a common belief. Aero have been clear over the years that they never sent jackets to Sam Walker that carried an SW label instead of Aero. Some of the jackets that were made by Aero have turned up here and there bearing both labels; I don't know at what point in the chain the SW label was added. We do know, though, that at some point Sam Walker stopped selling Aeros, and brought out their own line of copies. These were labelled as Sam Walker, but with a very familiar "inspiration" to their label design:

(Both of these photos lifted from a live eBay auction of a Sam Walker jacket on eBay at time of posting.)

The strategy employed by the SW company appeared to be to phase in their own jackets, which copied the Aero patterns but were made elsewhere, more cheaply (by all accounts from those who have owned them, they were decent enough but nowhere near Aero standards) and sell them off the back of having built a reputation as somewhere those sold quality leather jackets. I was not there at the time so don't know how the retail prices stacked up against what they'd been charging for Aeros previously.

(Worth clarifying, though, as it was discussed in the Lauder trial, that while copying Aero's patterns was unlawful, what Sam Walker did (effectively reverse engineering, taking actual jackets apart to make their own pattern) was not an infringement of Aero's intellectual property rights in the patterns.)

Those Sam Walker labels, though, are the nearest I've seen to anyone knocking off the actual Aero label. I don't believe I've ever seen a counterfeit-label "Aero" jacket for sale, usually just abuse of the name as a keyword search term, or spurious claims that a Sam Walker labelled like this one or an Alexander Leathers were "made by Aero", the latter usually rooted in a creative representation of the AL workforce being ex-Aero.

 

[Edward]

It's not even worth the effort. Fakes are meant to basically imply you are able to afford recognizable items that are seen as status symbols, thus basically any "mainstream" brand from Nike to Louis Vuitton.

There's no point in faking an Aero (beyond some bait and switch) as your average person does not even of Aero's existence and the (few) people who do can tell at a glance if it is real or not. Also, in general, it is very uncommon to see fakes of leather clothes other than sneakers that use cheap leather with plastic coating anyways. It gets very hard to really cut down on the price compared with originals to a point that it defeats paying more for the real thing.

Counterfeit operations do generally tend to go for mainstream brands rather than more niche items, yes. With Aero it's more about eBay resellers ime (ab)using Aero's trade marks, whether in the ways I mentioned above, or by keyword-stuffing their auction titles for search-return purposes; a clar breach of eBay's own rules, but not one that is recognised by the AI system to which they have now abdicated their complaints handling procedure. There was for a while a newer producer of (seemingly very nice) A2 jackets that would list the Aero Becanosfield contract repros as "Aero" in the title, though the listing details did explain the TM issue and the jackets themselves had an alternative spelling on the label, something like "Avro".

 

[RDS]

The odd counterfeit Aero Leather jacket, or at least one with a misappropriated Aero label, does exist.

There was this example from a few years ago and although they couldn’t say for sure Aero Leather themselves said they were 99.9% certain it wasn’t one of theirs:

Fit check - Aero Highwayman size 42

Hey, guys! UPDATE EDIT! As per discussion on the thread, we realised it is very much likely a counterfeit, so it will be returned to the seller. Please be aware and cautious on the case this goes back into listings as an Aero. I just picked this jacket from ebay. As I have next to no...

www.thefedoralounge.com

 

[Leatheradmirer]

There is a photo of this label on the Aero label thread here in a photo taken at Aero... https://www.thefedoralounge.com/threads/aero-labels.88549/page-3#post-2695541


A shame a lot of the images in that thread are gone. There is also a bunch of working label images here for anyone finding this thread in future... https://www.vintageleatherjackets.org/threads/aero-thunder-bay-label.32453/

Has anyone ever seen a fake Aero label? I've know I've seen Aero labels placed in non Aero jackets but I can't recall ever hearing of fake labels?

Thanks for the specific thread link! Appreciate it

What concerned me is that I had seen some sellers put Aero label to non Aero jackets.

I'm still pretty new to Aero and due to the little experience I currently have with Aeros and in Indonesia, where I live, any Aero is kinda hard to come by— That said I need to make sure I'm looking at the legit one hahaha

Size wise, is FQHH Aero generally slimmer than the Steerhide one?

The one I owned is in SH and currently looking at the FQHH version with same size (36) with same 1950s Halfbelt model but the owner of the FQHH sent me a measurement of it and it has width of 52cm / 20.5 inch, which is 3cm slimmer than my SH.