Vintage Jordache Zip Jacket 80s

The horse head on the tag came from a commercial that all three networks refused to air. In 1979, the Nakash brothers spent roughly a quarter of their annual sales on a spot showing an apparently topless woman in skintight jeans galloping a horse through the surf. NBC, CBS, and ABC all passed. Independent New York stations ran it anyway, and within weeks Jordache was the jean teenage girls wanted.

The brothers had arrived with nothing — Joe Nakash landed in New York in 1962 at twenty-one with $25 in his pocket, then sent for Ralph and Avi. Their store’s inventory burned in the 1977 blackout; the $120,000 insurance check became the seed money for the label, named as a mash-up of their three first names. By 1981 they were producing 1.2 million pairs a month.

This is the brand at full stride, past denim and into outerwear: a pale zip jacket with red piping down the front panels, elastic waist, snap cuffs, and the classic horse-head logo on a burgundy tag.

A jacket from a company built on a fire, a $25 arrival, and an ad too racy for network television.