What's Actually Inside the Hide
Most of what gets sold as "shearling" online isn't. Faux shearling is polyester fleece glued to a polyurethane shell that sheds, pills, and stops holding heat the moment the wind picks up. What we carry starts as a real sheepskin or lambskin hide, tanned on the flesh side with the wool left raw on the other. The leather side alone typically runs in the 1mm to 1.3mm range before you even count the fleece underneath it, heavier than the cowhide on a standard moto jacket, and you'll feel that the second you lift one off the hanger. Here's how to tell the difference yourself, if you want the full breakdown before you buy anywhere, not just from us.
Tannery sourcing matters here more than people think. A hide processed under Leather Working Group certification standards tends to come out more consistent and less brittle than one from an unaudited small-batch tannery. Wool quality runs on its own scale entirely. The USDA grades raw wool by fiber diameter, and finer grades are what give a shearling collar that soft, springy feel instead of a coarse, wiry one against your skin.
Color-wise, most of what's here leans into cognac, chestnut, and rust, the same warm palette you'd expect from a brown leather jacket, just with the wool showing on the inside instead of dyed to match.
Three Ways We Cut It
A shearling lineup that tries to do everything usually ends up doing nothing well, so this one splits three ways. The bomber-collar cut stacks the wool high around the neck and zips straight down the front, closest to what you'd actually see on a 1940s flight jacket, minus the parachute straps. Then there's the cropped option, which borrows the asymmetric zip and shorter body off our women's biker leather jackets, with shearling swapped in for the usual smooth cowhide, so you get the same hip-length silhouette at roughly triple the warmth. Last is the oversized one, longer, looser, meant to be thrown over a sweater rather than zipped tight against your body. If you want that decades-worn look without waiting a decade, that's the one to reach for.
H2: Sizing Runs Bulkier Than You Think
Wool adds bulk. A shearling jacket in your normal size will sit tighter through the shoulders than a same-size jacket without the fleece lining, mostly because there's an extra half-inch to an inch of material packed into the sleeves and across the back. You mostly don't need a sweater underneath. The shearling does that job on its own. Size up if you plan on heavy layering anyway. Otherwise, true to size works for most builds, and the wool compresses and softens with wear, so a snug fit in week one isn't a snug fit by month three.
Caring for the Wool Side
Skip the washing machine entirely. Skip dry cleaning too, unless the cleaner specifically handles shearling. Most don't, and the solvents used on regular leather will dry out the wool fibers and crack the hide underneath. Brush the fleece with a wire suede brush every few wears so it doesn't matt down. Spot-clean the leather side with a damp cloth, let it air dry away from direct heat, and hang it on a wide hanger so the weight of the wool doesn't pull the shoulders out of shape over time. The longer version of this, including what to actually do if it gets caught in the rain, is covered in our shearling care notes on the blog.
