Edward
Bartender
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- 25,074
- Location
- London, UK
It is also well known now that the Dominator and the Corsair may not be an original design by LL and that they might have copied an existing design of a then existing British competitor.
I believe I mentioned this somewhere above - Rivett's of Leytonstone were making the iconic Ton-Up, shirt collar / straight zip jacket under their Highwayman brand in the late fifties. Lewis bought out Rivett's at some point - I believe later than 1962, when they released the Dominator andCorsair, though I've never been able to trace an exact date. I know that well into the Seventies in many bike circles in the UK - notably, speedway racing - these were the to big rivals for leathers, and you were either a Lewis man or a Rivett's man. Lewis allowed the Highwayman brand to fall into disuse, which is how it was available for Aero to later take ownership of (there was a legal dispute between the two in, I think, the eighties as Lewis thought they owned the name because they bought the company long ago, but TM protection, for both registered and unregistered marks, requires that the mark be actually in use in order to stop people sitting on unused marks to damage competitors). The Aero Highwayman as we have known it for many years was based on an original Rivetts from the late fifties, but given an Americanisation with a boxier fit by Ken. The more recently launched Aero Original 59er Highwayman is a completely true to the original fit jacket, neater cut.
And the point about RRL being knock-offs of Levi's is being ignored.
In effect, don't they come under the same categorisation as the Japanese brands that preceded LVC?
This is a very interesting case. As many here know, I am a big fan of Japanese brands and love Japanese reproductions of classic jacket designs. The fact that Lewis Leathers is still making the same jacket does make it at least a moral grey area to my mind even if it is definitely not the same situation as Aero and Alexander Leathers at all as that is clearly a legal issue.
I personally would not be interested in buying the Addict models partly because I don't really like the Lewis Leathers originals, but also because I would generally prefer to buy the original when possible.
The Levi's angle is interesting. I own Conner's Sewing Factory jeans and adore them. These are copies of 1940's and earlier Levi's jeans. Obviously, these are not the same as modern Levi's, but why would I buy these when Levi's themselves also make some of these same reproductions themselves? Well, the fact is that the Conner's Sewing Factory versions are provably superior reproductions than Levi's own reproductions. In this case, I would not even call it a moral grey area. Firstly, Levi's stopped making these jeans years ago so their current versions are reproductions in the same way that the Conner's Sewing Factory models are. Additionally, if Levi's can't do as good of a job as the other company, I see no reason why I shouldn't go with the other company (in this case, a solo maker who has put an insane amount of effort and dedication into this project, all the way down to hand folding the seams and using only period correct sewing machines, measures that Levi's themselves do not take.)
This said, I have no idea if the situation is the same with LL and Addict. My guess is that it's not. I'm not defending Adddict. However, I am positing the idea that a reproduction from a separate company could be better than anything else currently available, even if it's made by the 'original' maker.
One could also argue Lewis are doing the same as Levis. While not in response to others reproducing their jackets, the Lewis that Derek now runs is not where Lewis were by the 80s; indeed, as I've heard the story told (including by Derek himself), when he decided to buy the company and rebuild it as a 'classics' maker, Lewis didn't even have the patterns for most of the classic jackets in their archives - he had to spend a few years buying originals and re-creating everything.