Leather forecast

PHOTOGRAPHY:It's timeless and classic, but the devil's in the detail. DEIRDRE MCQUILLANon how to wear leather

NO URBAN UNIFORM is more well travelled than jeans and a black leather jacket. A simple combo, perhaps, but like everything that seems plain and straightforward in fashion, full of pitfalls for the unwary. The devil, as always, is in the detail. A black leather jacket can be tough or kid glove, can be sleek or intimidating, can be polished or butch, can look sophisticated or tacky, can be laden with hardware or free of decor.

Biker and bomber styles are current favourites and the high street offers endless interpretations of these classics at affordable prices (Selected Femme at BT2 does a killer number for €215), but caution is needed. I remember being shocked at a pronouncement that women over a certain age should never wear a black leather jacket. Why not? You can take on the world in one.

New ideas about how to weather leather come to us via some of fashion’s current greats. Rick Owens and Phoebe Philo at Celine, for example, are masters at cutting it clean, showing how to drape it sexily, how to tame its tenacity with elegance or marry it successfully with other fabrics. Watanabe sculpts it, but at scary prices. Celine’s linear panelled leather dress and tunics from last winter, for example, spawned many tacky copies, and few who copy Rick Owens get it right.

His cutting technique is what matters; small shoulders and long sleeves make the wearer look slimmer. An indentation at the rear improves the look of the backside, as does a rear peplum. “The whole idea,” Owens once told an interviewer, “was to do old Hollywood glamour, but in a ripped T-shirt way.” His best-known washed grey leather jackets with stretchy, cable knit sleeves have an inimitable look of street couture that doesn’t fade with age and has nothing to do with trends.

Anne Demeulemeester is in the same league. Mixing leather with other textures is one way of softening its edge. Sinéad Doyle’s woven leather top is another way of fashioning hide in a new way. Laser-cut leather can look like lace; Asos, for example, had a wonderful drape-front jacket in punched leather, which is a sell-out already this season. Leather trousers, unless they are ultra-soft and supple, are best left to bikers, while circle leather skirts should to left to the lean and svelte.

Here in Ireland, we have our own leather masters: Róisín Gartland comes from a long and distinguished leatherworking tradition; John Rocha’s timeless black shearlings have always featured in his winter collections; and Una Burke has made her own mark with her award-winning leather body pieces. In London, self-taught Irishman Paul Seville, who has worked for Alexander McQueen, fashions elaborate accessories in snakeskin and Italian hide with crystal and silver. Joanne Hynes’s newest red glacé leather skirts, recently shown in London, have a sassy look for spring/summer 2012. Whatever the weather, leather’s never been better.