No, Loewe's bomber jacket is not a plagiarism of Yeezy Gap's Round Jacket

Like it or not, the Loewe bomber jacket designed by JW Anderson is the hottest piece of the season. Worn by It girls like Kendall Jenner, Hailey Bieber, Taylor Russel, and Lori Harvey, it's going viral on TikTok as the common denominator of the most famous faces' casual looks. The garment is the protagonist of a fierce controversy, highlighting its prohibitive price tag (5900€) and resemblance to Yeezy Gap's Round Jacket. But no, Loewe's new must-have is certainly not a plagiarism of the much more affordable jacket proposed by Kanye West before the psychotic meltdown, nor can we credit the Chicago rapper with the intuition for a garment that reproduces the shine and roundness of a balloon (or a bin bag). The genesis of the model goes back much further, to the 1930s, when the intuition of a young designer whose designs were described by Virginia Woolf as 'devilishly and geometrically perfect' laid the foundation for a new conception of outwear: Charles James.

puffer by Charles James

puffer by Charles James

puffer by Charles James

Charles Wilson Brega James, a British fashion designer who became naturalized in the United States, is widely recognized as one of the most influential designers of the 20th century and was a major inspiration for designers such as John Galliano, Rick Owens, and Zac Posen. He showed his first collection in Paris in 1937. On this occasion, he also designed a unique quilted jacket in white satin, which Salvador Dalí called "the first soft sculpture" and which is now exhibited in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The design of the first puffer jacket ever created took a significant leap forward in terms of functionality thanks to Norma Kamali in the 1970s. The American designer was responsible for inventing the iconic Sleeping Bag coat, a fashion constant of the time and one of the brand's best-selling garments, much loved by André Leon Talley, who wore a bright red coat on the streets of New York.

The Sleeping Bag by Norma Kamali

André Leon Talley wearing the Sleeping Bag by Norma Kamali

Rihanna wearing the Sleeping Bag by Norma Kamali

Kendall Jenner wearing the Sleeping Bag by Norma Kamali

Kendall Jenner wearing the Sleeping Bag by Norma Kamali

Lady Gaga wearing the Sleeping Bag by Norma Kamali

Designed in 1973, the jacket uses the NASA method of storing heat: each coat consists of two coats sewn together with air pockets between them so that there is an alternation between the heat produced by the body and the external cold. The idea of making a jacket from a purely synthetic material, polyester, came to Kamali through a strange circumstance she recounted many years later in an interview with The New York Times. After separating from her husband, the designer was camping in the woods with a friend: «It was cold - she remembers - and I used to get up at night to go to the toilet.»One particularly frosty evening, she put on her sleeping bag and ran into the woods: «While I was running, I thought, 'I have to put sleeves on it'» The rest is history.