First Kim Kardashian, Then The World: How Alpinestars’ New Boundary-Pushing Capsule, RSRV, Is Redefining Moto Chic

Blame it on Marlon Brando—or Pharell. Or maybe Kim Kardashian.

The former’s 1953 portrayal of Johnny Stabler in The Wild One is widely seen as the origin story of motorcycle style—the sort of splash that created the ripples still rolling out in the form of biker jackets and jeans and tall, sturdy black leather boots. What Brando personified, of course, was the outlaw, the iconic rebel, with or without a cause. (When a local girl asks Stabler what he’s rebelling against, he famously responds: “Whaddya got?”)

What began as mere protective gear in the form of Brando’s Schott Perfecto One Star studded leather jacket has become the prime mover of an entire ethos, industry, world view, and way of life. But if the mythology and iconography of biker rebellion are so simple as to be fixed in stone, the state of the art of that protective gear is an ever-evolving, highly engineered terrain, with everyone from racers to recreational riders now donning wildly colored, custom-fitted leather suits and jackets equipped with titanium skid plates at shoulders, knees, and elbows.

And while it’s a bit hazy as to exactly when style-forward early adopters began wearing this functional, highly technical gear away from the motorcycle as a style flex, it’s easy to see Pharell as a kind of canary in the high-vis coal mine: His evolution from bespoke classic biker jacket in the summer of 2015 to full-on racing leathers with an articulated leather skeleton sewn onto the outside a mere 18 months later was a kind of sartorial marker. We soon witnessed Rihanna and A$AP Rocky, Billie Eilish, Kim Gordon, and Justin Bieber, among many, many others—you, maybe?—in moto jackets and motocross pants and armored racing gloves and flamboyant racing jerseys, mainly by Alpinestars, a company headquartered in the tiny mountain town of Asolo, in the Veneto region of Italy.

Founded in 1963 by Sante Mazzarolo to manufacture hiking boots, Alpinestars soon morphed into making boots for skiing and motocross racing. Sixty-one years later, with Sante’s son Gabriele now running the operation, you’ll see their radically engineered, safety-centric apparel and footwear on Formula 1 and NASCAR drivers, MotoGP riders, motocross professionals, recreational motorcyclists—and, yeah, Kim Kardashian.

If the broader fashion world didn’t yet know about Alpinestars, the leaked photos of Kardashian stepping out in an oversized couture moto jacket on the eve of Balenciaga’s Paris show last October solved that. The piece she wore was the first collaboration between Balenciaga and Alpinestars RSRV, a new unisex luxury streetwear brand designed by Denise Focil that launches tomorrow at 10 am EST with a debut capsule of nine fashion pieces, each of them constructed from deadstock Alpinestars racing fabrics.