Leather in modern culture

Leather, due to its exceptional abrasion and wind struggle, found a use in rough occupations. The durable image of a cowboy in leather chaps gave way to the leather-jacketed and leather-helmeted aviator. When motorcycles were invented, some riders took to exhausting heavy leather jackets to protect from road rash and wind explosion; some also wear chaps or full fur pants to shelter the lower body. Many sports still use leather to help in live the game or protecting players: due to its stretchy nature it can be formed and flexed for the occurrence.

As leather can also be a metonymical expression for things made from it, the term leathering is as reasonable as tanning in the sense of a physical penalty applied with a leather whip.

Leather fetishism is the name commonly used to describe a fetishistic magnetism to people wearing leather, or in definite cases, to the garments themselves.