Best leather for a lifelong jacket?

[El Marro]

And I feel like the CXL FQHH is kind of part of the classic/quintessential "Aero experience", especially for my first jacket from them.

I felt the same way and my first (and only) two custom Aero jackets were both CXL FQHH. At the time this was probably the most popular leather on the forum and I had to have it.
I don’t wear my CXL jackets much these days but I have to admit that my cordovan Bootlegger has received more compliments from strangers on the street than all of my other jackets combined.

 

[TartuWolf]

Not sure how the conversation shifted so heavily from "Best leather for a lifelong jacket?" to denim/jeans, but it seems like this happens quite often in this forum

My perspective as a (relative) youngster on jeans:
- I found that I like dense/heavy denim (18-21oz), mainly because how it "stacks" and molds rather than drapes limply. If it drapes then any access material bunches up at the bottom in one place. If it stacks then it distributes nicely.
- Always straight leg, just personal preference.
- Whether skinny straight or regular/classic straight is really dictated by the footwear in my perspective. If I'm going for engineer boots then I HAVE to take the regular straight ones otherwise I can't get the leg opening over the shaft. It also helps that the engineers are lugged and wider profile which looks great with a wide calf area of the regular straight leg. My 6" service boots are slightly slimmer in profile (and have no lugs) so the skinny straight looks much more proportionate with them. Note that the "skinny straight" is just the makers name for the cut, I definitely would not call it skinny myself, it's not skin tight at all, but narrower (especially in the leg opening) than their classic straight.
- The only thing I still hate about the heavy denim is access to front pockets. The unbranded brand company did a lot of great things with their denim, but totally botched the front pockets on their heavier models. For me they are key pockets at best.
- Since I found out more about denim I started to heavily dislike pre-faded and pre-distressed denim which is what the vast majority of the population wears. Similarly I dislike mall boots that put fake welts to get that "Goodyear welt look", even when 99% of the buyer have no idea about welted or stitched footwear anyway.
- I'm also an advocate of washing your denim as little as possible IF you want the sharp contrasting fades. That's a big IF. Obviously need to wash them if they get dirty or muddy. Disinfect with some sprays from time to time otherwise. Whether this strategy is viable or not really depends on how the person wears the jeans and what his/her lifestyle is. Works well enough for my white collar work.

Aaaaaand I think that's enough rambling, I'm done.

 

[Edward]

This was true until the mid-2010s (although even then with a vocal straight leg minority) but since, both denim enthusiasts and the fashion market have shifted to higher waists and straight legs.

For instance, even ‘mainstream’ non-LVC Levi’s offers some new high waist straight leg cuts, sort of a “high street LVC” (a good direction to see this happening to the mainstream line, though sad that at the same time they’ve been moving LVC in a less repro direction).

Good to hear that's moving on. Hopefully that means mainstream fashion in general will. I've never given two hoots about being 'in' (when it comes to fashion, I'd much rather be 'out'), but it would be nice one day, even just for a few years, to be able to go into a shop and buy a reasonably priced pair of trousers without having to hunt all over the web for something affordable and still have to make compromises in the width department...

 

[Edward]

Yeah I don't get it either. People seem to think this looks modern and updated and therefore better, but they don't actually suit people's bodies well imo

I did the skinny leg thing in the eighties - though for me it was all about NYC, 1977; I wore drainpipes when I could find them as late as the early 2000s. Then I hit middle age, and one yer waist measurement is higher than your inside leg, drainpipes are a far from forgiving look. When they came back into mainstream fashion here about ten years ago - ironically long after I'd gotten into a much wider leg, which then became the hard thing to find (not in denim, that's generally easy, but 'proper' trews....) - it amazed me how comical they seemed. Probably because fashion dictates what it does, not what flatters the wearer. That and I'm now old enough to be amused by the sort of people (sometimes the same actual individual people) who previously sneered at the goths and the punks and called them all sorts now prancing around in exactly those same cuts because they'd been told they were now 'fashionable'. Individual tastes can change, of course - I know mine have - but fashion definitely also has its blind followers.