We’ve been huge fans of Japanese brand Addict’s boots for years (there’s just something about toe spring!). Between visiting them in Tokyo ourselves—which led to Addict to exhibiting at our mega-event-formerly-known-as-Boot Camp along with co-creating an excellent collaboration boot—we’ve gotten to know Addict and its founder Satoshi Ishijima well enough to do something we’ve been inching towards for a long time.
Crossing the boot barrier to talk about leather jackets.
We like to think we know a bit about boots at this point. Not everything! That’s impossible. But almost a decade spent in factories, workshops, tanneries, and retail stores, plus burrowing deep inside the heads of the people who make what we love…well, it’s been beneficial.
The tricky thing about trying to cover any kind of apparel with the same authority is 1) we haven’t done all the above every day, and 2) much of the available history stems from marketing. Even vintage catalogs were selling somebody something. Which means it’s almost unavoidable that sedimentary layers of myth and apocrypha build up over the years (think of how tricky it was to try to untangle the origin of the engineer boot).
So to do it really right, you either need someone whose undertaken the years of work required to sift back through that history, find the inconsistencies, and cross reference claims and stories against the actual garments. Someone who has hands-on experience with the actual techniques involved in making something like a jacket or boot. Or, ideally, both.
Satoshi Ishijima is both.
Satoshi started selling his own jackets under the name Addict Clothes in 2010—something that never would have happened had he not first become obsessed with a specific strain of vintage leather jackets. Collecting turned into a Tokyo-based vintage store by the same name, which specialized in British motorcycle jackets, mostly from the 1950s through the 1970s.
When that many jackets pass through your hands, two things start to happen. 1) You get intimately familiar with the similarities and differences between various models. And 2) you naturally hold onto the best and rarest examples for yourself, until your collection starts to resemble a reference library—a curated set of artifacts used to identify and date new or unknown examples. And then that reference library becomes a nascent book, if only you can find someone to photograph it all (spoiler alert: he did, and the book is here).
Trouble is, you can’t wear a book. Customers had a habit of asking about those rare, extremely-not-for-sale jackets, which tended to be the coolest, most beautiful, or just most interesting pieces in the shop. And so Addict started to look into launching their own line of jackets, before quickly running into a wall. Almost none of the details Satoshi loved on vintage pieces could be matched with components available at the time.
A core issue: unlike American jackets, which are typically cowhide or horsehide, British racing jackets were often made from sheepskin.
If that strikes you as odd, it’s probably because nearly all of the sheepskin tanned today is thin, soft, and supple—unlike the thicker, denser sheepskin available when those old jackets were made. So Addict worked with a local tannery (they won’t say who) to produce a vegetable tanned, tea-core sheepskin clocking in at just under 2mm (~4oz).
One of their favorite details on the vintage jackets was the way the cotton tape on the zippers would fade differently on different areas of the jacket. But all of the modern zippers they could find were set in colorfast synthetic tape. So they made their own! Complete with vintage-style pulls. Combine a whole lot of those little details, and you end up with Addict’s first jacket, the AD-01.
[Ed Note: Yes we need to speed through it a bit since this is the internet, but developing all that stuff was REALLY tough and took basically forever]
From there, it was relatively short leap to boots. Addict already had relationships with tanneries and manufacturers, plus proximity to vintage source material. Satoshi himself is totally committed to the lifestyle that comes with the jackets—rebuilding and riding vintage motorcycles from the same period, dressing the part, even hiring a full-time mechanic to repair, display, and sell motorcycles in their Tokyo shop. It’s a truly amazing feeling when you walk in.
Is part of that marketing? Of course it is. But phenomenal marketing, truly. It’s also worth plenty that most of their actual marketing is just pictures of Satoshi doing his thing. The guy wears in boots like he’s a five-time Patina Thunderdome champ, is extremely earnest and committed to the ethos, and has been for almost 20 years.
So, boots. Satoshi wanted something he could wear with his jackets but that was still a little sleeker and more elegant than the bump-toed engineers that were still pretty dominant. His goal was to create something simple, almost quiet—”the basic concept is to avoid anything unnecessary,” Satoshi told us—but which hums on the often unseen details, and ages wonderfully.
The result is the ever-so-slightly western-influenced Addict boot lineup. Their engineers are probably the most distinctive thanks to the round-but-low toe and clean lines of the CL last, but the range also includes service boots, a funky lace-to-toe shoe Satoshi personally loves, a square-gored Chelsea, and of course the standout side-zips that might just be our personal favorite.
We covered Addict’s boots in more detail (and visited their store) a few years ago in our Sole Searching: Tokyo series, so make sure to check that out for plenty more info. We also recommend checking out our interview with Satoshi above, and the very excellent deep look at Addict and Satoshi’s “New Vintage” approach from The Casual, below.
Today Addict has three stores, one each in Tokyo, Nagoya, and Osaka. Select retailers also carry Addict, although their wholesale focus has shrunk, quite intentionally. In addition to ready-to-wear jackets and boots, they also have a clothing line (ACVM) that ranges from rayon shirts and wide, pleated chinos to denim, as well as a handful of bags and accessories.
The jacket lineup is at the heart of the brand, and the core models have changed relatively little over the decade and a half they’ve been making them. But new leathers and patterns appear (and disappear) every year as they continue to experiment and build out their line.
So without further ado, let’s finally, really talk jackets…
AD-01 in Black Teacore Sheepskin
This is the first jacket Addict launched, and one of their simplest—it uses a center zip and shirt-style collar, with two welt pockets on the front, and internal chest pocket. It remains Satoshi’s personal favorite. It’s kind of a common denominator jacket, and ends up very flexible as a result. But there are still plenty of Addict details here, like the cinch adjusters and the exposed sleeve zips.
The leather is a heavyweight, teacore sheepskin, making it a little bit lighter and more flexible than most similarly nice jackets on the market. Combining flexibility and the surface dye of teacore leather means the jacket flexes more often, so the leather is stretched and compressed more at the crease points, meaning you break through to the leathers brown core a little bit faster. That said, it’s still going to take some good honest hard wear to get there.
AD-02L in Black Teacore Horsehide
Now that we have two jackets to compare, the variables start to emerge. Some big ones: zip style, length, and leather. The AD-02 (and all of its variants) have an asymmetrical zip rather than center zip on the AD-01, a design that traces its lineage back to the Schott Perfecto—most modern brands, including Addict, call this a “double rider”. They’re what most people picture if you ask them to close their eyes and imagine a leather jacket, but your probability of just throwing one on successfully is correlated with your probability of getting into Berghain.
Probably the move to looking great in a double rider is: be young or old, and avoid in middle age (the people who can pull these off in middle age do not care what we have to say, trust me). The “L” in “AD-02L” designates that this is the long variant. Addict makes many of their jackets in two lengths, and the bodies on older double-riders were almost always a little cropped. Which makes sense if you’re wearing them on a bike (or a horse?). Western stockists tend to carry the long version, but you can check out the standard—cropped—version here.
Finally, leather. The variant above is in combination-tanned horsehide, and Addict is quick to emphasize that this particular tannage is relatively heavy on veg and light on chrome. Like the sheepskin, it has a black surface dye and brown core that will show through with wear. Most of their core jackets (including both mentioned so far) are available in horsehide and sheepskin, with other leathers making an occasional cameo. It’s worth nothing that across styles Addict tends to keep the pockets pretty pared back, with four zipped welt pockets here and side adjusters rather than a belt (a common detail on many older jackets; Addict’s AD-06 and AD-13 are belted). But those pockets have the chain pulls that were common on 60’s and 70s jackets, and are definitely a key part of a hardware-forward pattern.
AD-05 Clubman in Black Teacore Sheepskin
The AD-05 introduces two more variables: collar style and padding. This is what’s sometimes called a “cafe racer,” even though the connection between the pattern and motorcycle subculture is a little uncertain. It has a short, snap collar—which Addict lines with corduroy—and a straight center zip. There’s an extra layer of leather padding on the shoulders and elbows, which you’ll also see on the AD-07 and AD-09.
AD-08 Granada Custom in Black Teacore Sheepskin
So far we’ve covered the core motorcycle jacket styles that Addict specializes in. But they also offer a few that are references to jackets usually made in other materials. In this case, that’s the Type III pattern and all of its denim offspring, while the AD-10 (which reminds of a certain British waxed cotton jacket) also falls into this category.
While there is a standard version of the AD-08 (as well custom option for all of the jackets we’ve talked about so far), we’re talking about the custom version here—which allows you to choose between black, dark blue, vintage blue, and turquoise sheepskin, as well as pick your lining (red quilted cotton, black polyester, or wool tartan), and whether or not to add an optional arm pocket. Sleeve and body length can be customized for an additional upcharge, but there’s a baseline customization fee of $350. The current lead time is quoted at 12-14 months. Addict generally takes opens custom orders only for a limited period time a few times per year.
ACV-LJK06D Coach in Black Deerskin
There’s one more category of Addict jacket you should be aware of: limited runs, often with slightly more experimental patterns, housed under their clothing label (ACVM) rather than the standard leather jacket line. The most recent release is the coach jacket in flexible deerskin, with a snap closure, elastic cuffs, and a waxed cotton drawstring at the help. Probably a bit less waterproof than the standard nylon version, but way nicer. This thing is cool.
So there we have it. Leather jackets. We still don’t know everything about them! But luckily Satoshi Ishijima knows plenty.
