G-1 Jacket – A Design to Take Your Breath Away​

In July 2019, the first teaser trailer for Top Gun: Maverick was released at San Diego Comic-Con.

Viewers immediately began to scrutinize one shot in particular, where Tom Cruise throws on a worn leather jacket with a fur collar and patches all over the back.

That jacket design, commonly known as the G-1, is practically synonymous with Top Gun, with Naval Aviation, and with the United States to a certain degree.

The jacket known as the G-1 originated as the M-422a, an intermediate-weight flight jacket which appeared in Navy inventories in the late 1930s.

Made from brown chrome-tanned goatskin with a rayon lining, wool knit cuffs and waistband, and a dark brown mouton collar, the G-1 has changed very little in the past century.

The lining is now nylon and the collar is made of synthetic fur, but the Navy has otherwise kept it the same.

Standards have even tightened since the Second World War, when limited wartime resources resulted in variations in the color of the leather, mouton, and thread.

Unlike the Army’s exceedingly simple A-2 jacket, the G-1 features a half-belt and gusseted shoulder design, in what is often known as an “action back.”

These details, which give the jacket an athletic silhouette and allow ease of movement, were common in casual jackets of the 1930s for the same reasons.

Despite being a lifelong fan of the A-2, after I purchased a vintage G-1 I had to admit that the sporty, trim-looking G-1 was more comfortable than my stiff horsehide A-2.

The practical aspects of the G-1 extend beyond its fit. Besides the two exterior flap pockets low on the front, it was also designed with a snap-closure interior pocket, intended for storing maps for easy access during flight, another detail that the comparatively spartan A-2 does not have.

The fur collar features a tab allowing it to button across the wearer’s throat to keep the neck warm in cold weather.

Despite its lack of utility in the sweltering South Pacific where much of the Navy and Marine Corp’s World War Two campaigns took place, the G-1 design became indelibly linked with the image of Naval aviation.

It would naturally appear in films about the Second World War and on fictional characters who had mustered out of the Navy, like Humphrey Bogart’s character in the lesser-known post-war film Tokyo Joe.

The Korean conflict would spawn a handful of films depicting the Naval air campaign, as well as photos of baseball star and Marine Corps reserve pilot Ted Williams in his G-1.

Aside from a brief cost-cutting period between 1979 and 1981, the G-1 design has been in continuous issue to flight crew of the US Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard since the Second World War.

The attempt to replace it with the same Nomex flight jacket issued by the US Air Force at the time was roundly rejected, and all qualified aircrew who missed out on receiving a G-1 during that time were retroactively given one when the order was reversed.

Like the Army’s A-2, the G-1 was a stylish and popular jacket which quickly made its way into civilian wear through military surplus stores, bring-backs, or civilian versions of the design.

Many jackets along the same lines were available for general purchase or procured by police departments for their motorcycle patrols, but the G-1 jacket hadn’t reached its high point of popularity yet.

In the 1986 film Top Gun, Pete “Maverick” Mitchell wears a G-1 flight jacket heavily adorned with unit and deployment patches, although he never wears it with his uniform.

This is because the jacket in the film belonged to his late father, as indicated by the Vietnam War-era patches (Cruise and presumably Mitchell would have been ten years old when the US withdrew from Vietnam).

The G-1’s prominent appearance in Tony Scott’s sunset-lit glory shots and on the iconic poster boosted the Navy’s

recruitment rate as well as the public’s need for G-1-type jackets.

Thanks to Top Gun, patched out flight jackets with fur collars became a must-have garment. A comic by Marty Murphy, published in Playboy Magazine in the 80s, depicted a party where the only attendee who wasn’t wearing a leather flight jacket was identified as an actual former military pilot.

When work on costuming began for Top Gun: Maverick, costume designer Marlene Stewart discovered that the original jacket from the first film had been kept by Tom Cruise when production wrapped.

According to her, Cruise had worn his beloved G-1 until it was practically in tatters so a replacement was sourced for the sequel.

Stewart and her team took measurements from the original 1980s Top Gun jacket, as well as adopting aspects from different production versions of the G-1 to create a new one that would flatter Cruise and appeal to a new generation of filmgoers.

I can’t say for sure if the G-1 has risen in popularity since the movie came out, but that’s because it’s so ingrained in our fashion culture.

It's like asking if jeans have become more popular: they’ve been popular for a long time, we all agree they look good and they’re not going away, and neither is the G-1.