Skulls, wings & outlaws: motocycle club insignia & cultural identity

In Objects of Desire: Design and Society 1750-1980, Adrian Forty notes that “organisations which extend over a large geographical area, perhaps across different countries and languages, have always had difficulties in maintaining their cohesion” (Forty, 1986, p. 223). An outside observer may assume that outlaw motorcycle groups from around the world are claiming exactly such cohesion through the recognisable similarities in the designs of their “colours” – the patches worn on the back of their leather jackets. Whilst all such groups wish to buy into a common worldview, the desire for (internal) demarcation is clearly also at stake. In the case of outlaw motorcycle club insignia, Forty’s principle of cohesion through design can be seen to be held in permanent tension by a basic tenet of fashion, as extrapolated by Georg Simmel in his well-known essay of 1904 – fashionable people will seek to change their look as soon as it is copied by other aspiring groups. In the world of fashion, it is the social elite (the aristocracy) that remains at the forefront of fashion. The leading outlaw motorcycle gangs do not change, however; their dominance is reflected in the design of their insignia, and it is this design that other groups wish to copy. Far from, changing to keep ahead, the elite group allows others only a limited access to its look. From an historical perspective the case of outlaw motorcycle club insignia lies at the intersection of various icons and artefacts of an intercultural nature: film and myth mix with American military heritage. This paper will seek to trace the roots of these infamous designs.