Leon’s jacket from Resident Evil 4 may be one of the best pieces of clothing in the series (right up there with Ada Wong’s wildly impractical dress and… Wesker’s shimmering check-patterned suit in Resident Evil 5?). The sheepskin-lined bomber jacket looks cosy, comfortable and stylish, maintaining flexibility while protecting Leon from scratches and bites (at least until he gets rid of it a short way into the game). For the freshly announced Resident Evil 4 Remake, however, it looks like Leon’s outerwear is getting an upgrade.
Some observant folks on Twitter spied in the smallprint at the end of the teaser trailer that Leon’s jacket is in fact copyrighted, and “appears with permission from Schott NYC.”
I love how Capcom has a disclaimer for Leon’s jacket pic.twitter.com/uS9vWeaJ77June 2, 2022
Going to the Schott NYC website, it didn’t take long before I arrived at what looks an awful lot like Leon’s fancy new jacket, the Classic B-3 Sheepskin Leather Bomber Jacket (opens in new tab). Unfortunately, the description makes references to WWII and how it was worn by “non-aviators like Gen. George Patton” rather than “REIV and non-aviators like Leon Kennedy,” so we can’t officially confirm this, but have reached out to Schott NYC for confirmation and are awaiting a reply.
Cross-referencing the jacket with the one we faintly see in the teaser, there are a few similarities: the sheepskin lining at 1:07 matches up precisely (as do the tapered cuffs), then a couple of seconds later at 1:09 we see the cross-shaped seam on the back as well as the seam running down the back of the arms, which again checks out.
The jacket looks lovely—much nicer than the knock-off ‘Leon jackets’ you can get on eBay that are made out of materials more suitable for kink parties than zombie outbreaks. At $1,500 it’s a little above my budget, but if Leon sheds it later in the game to reveal a black muscle-fit H&M t-shirt underneath, I may well bite for that.