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ELIZABETH - The earliest leather jackets out of the Schott NYC family factory in the late 1920s addressed the needs of motorcyclists by using pricey zippers and an asymmetrical flap front as protection from the wind. A few years later came bomber jackets with knit cuffs to keep the breeze from creeping up the arms of wartime pilots.

It's doubtful the company's founders, the late brothers Irving and Jack Schott, could have imagined those functional styles to be popular four generations later among hipsters - but they are. This fall, tough-looking leather jackets are considered a must-have item.

A tour of the family business factory in an industrial neighborhood of Elizabeth yields one-of-a-kind, handpainted graffiti jackets and others done in collaboration with edgy designer Jeremy Scott and covered in Keith Haring prints.

A hint of bad-boy style has been key to the brand's success since Marlon Brando wore a Schott jacket in "The Wild One" in 1953 - an image further enhanced by James Dean's affinity for the company's Perfecto silhouette. In the 1970s, the punk band The Ramones adopted it as part of its wardrobe.

"The Perfecto has a spirit of its own: It's for a bad boy, a rebel, an independent thinker," says Jason Schott, Irving's great-grandson and now the chief operating officer. At one point in the '60s and '70s, there was such a strong association of leather jackets with antagonists some schools banned them. Of course, that only made them more coveted by the cool kids.

To look at the Schotts, "rebel" isn't the first word that comes to mind: They look more like your suburban neighbors. It's hard to picture any of them in leather jackets, yet the business is in their blood.

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