BIKERS BEYOND THE FRINGE? HERE THEY GO A-TASSELLING!

 

An AI image of a biker wearing a fringed black leather jacket (BLJ); image created by RebelBikerDude using ChatGPT

Bearing in mind that this blog of mine is devoted to images (AI-generated) of bikers & motorcycling, it should come as no surprise that as the staple, fundamental item of biker attire, the black leather jacket (BLJ) features very prominently throughout my blog's numerous galleries - and not just in its standard, unelaborated version either. You'll find galleries devoted to a wide range of variants, such as BLJs that are not actually black - look out for red ones (please click here), green ones (here), blue ones (here) & white ones (here), for instance, all of which are worn by bikers in real life too. There are also ones that have been customised by their owners with a multitude of studs and/or badges (portrayed in many different galleries), as well as with eyecatching painted or sewn-on back patches sometimes (here).

The well-worn (sometimes exceedingly well-worn) look, particularly popular among rebel & outlaw bikers, is also catered for (here, for instance), as is its diametric opposite, the gleaming, immaculate BLJ as proudly paraded in by BLUF leatherman bikers (here). Sleeveless BLJs, either deliberately manufactured that way or created from normal sleeved ones by the simple expedient of manually cutting off the sleeves along their shoulder seams, are also greatly favoured by bikers, so they are well-represented in my blog. And there are even a couple of galleries (here & here) specifically showcasing bikers & leather.

However, I recently realised that there is one major BLJ variant, not only worn by bikers, moreover, but also favoured by Country & Western singers, to which I've never devoted a gallery. Namely, the fringed BLJ, in which short, medium-length or long leather tassels conspicuously fringe the long edges of the jacket's sleeves, and often occur in a straight horizontal line spanning its back's two shoulder blades too. The official reason for these accoutrements is that they help to channel water away from the jacket when a biker is riding through heavy rain, but there is no doubt that some are designed that way predominantly for decorative purposes.

The first BLJ that I purchased specifically for wearing while riding my first of many motorbikes, back when I was in my early 20s, was a fringed, heavy-duty one (as opposed to the normally paper-thin fashion-only accessories), with medium-length sleeve & back tassels, and I can still recall how proudly I strutted my stuff in it when walking around town or socialising with mates. But as is true with so many other things, the novelty eventually faded, and once it had acquired the highly-prized well-worn look with rubbed surface patina that every serious biker hopes his BLJ will attain, I mercilessly took a pair of scissors to those ornate but now out-of-place tassels, snipping them off and thereby converting my jacket into a standard unadorned biker BLJ. I then proceeded to wear it for a fair few years, on and off the bike, until my own advancing age was accompanied by increasing girth, meaning that I could no longer fit into it. But sentiment ensures that even today my old defringed BLJ still retains its place in my wardrobe of biker gear as a fond reminder of long-gone youthful times.

Anyway, in homage to all fringed (and formerly fringed) BLJs & their biker owners everywhere, here's a gallery devoted to this very distinctive BLJ variant (with a few pix depicting ones with extra-long tassels to represent those extravagantly showy examples beloved & worn on stage by C&W singers). And as with many of my previous themed galleries, the bikers in this one appear in a variety of different settings, from real-life scenarios to fantasy & sci fi ones, so there's somethig here for everybody to enjoy.

To the more sedate, conservative biker (assuming that such an entity actually exists!), fringed BLJs might seem beyond the fringe (pun definitely intended!), but they have countless fans who are only too happy to go a-tasselling in theirs (two puns in one sentence - I'm spoiling you!). As for me: despite having worn my fringed BLJ for several years before finally de-tasselling it, I never did determine one way or the other whether its tassels really did help to keep the rain off me!

More of my AI-created biker images next time!

Plus: please click here to access a chronological listing of fully clickable links to all galleries uploaded by me on this blog. NB - all of the images included in this page's gallery were created by me, RebelBikerDude, using the AI image-generation programs Magic Studio, Grok, Dream Lab, Adobe Firefly, ChatGPT, NightCafe, Dola, FreeGen & Nano Banana, plus Grok Imagine with the video clips, for non-commercial, entertainment purposes only, so they are not real images and they do not feature any real-life persons or copyrighted characters.