Cultural

Made by the Movies

By ORBIS Editorial · Reviewed 26 July 2026

August 22, 2026 · 2 min read · ORBIS Editorial

Three objects, three countries, three professions they were never meant to leave. What connects a motorcycle jacket, a navy diver's watch and a tram driver's sunglasses is the same accident happening three times: each was built to solve someone's actual working problem, and each was then claimed by a single film performance that turned function into fame.

Schott NYC began in 1913 in the basement of a Lower East Side tenement, founded by brothers Irving and Jack Schott making raincoats sold door-to-door. In 1928 Irving Schott designed what's widely credited as the first leather motorcycle jacket — horsehide, double-breasted, belted, with an asymmetric zip front he named the "Perfecto" after his favorite cigar. The zip's real job was a windproof seal for riders; its cultural job arrived decades later, cemented when Marlon Brando wore one in The Wild One. Schott is now in its third and fourth generation of family ownership, still manufacturing in the United States.

Panerai's watches began as a government contract. Giovanni Panerai opened Florence's first watch shop in 1860; by the late 1930s the house was supplying the Royal Italian Navy's commando divers with Radiomir, a radium-based luminous compound it patented in 1916, in watches built with Rolex movements. The Luminor followed, with the crown-protecting bridge device that remains the most recognizable silhouette in dive watching. The watches were military secrets for decades — civilians could only buy them from 1993 — until Sylvester Stallone wore one on screen and, in the house's own words, "lit the fuse" for the watch's second life as a civilian icon.

Persol was founded in Turin in 1917 by Giuseppe Ratti to serve pilots and sports drivers who needed protective eyewear — the name comes from the Italian per il sole, "for the sun." The Model 649, introduced in 1957, was designed for Turin's own tram drivers, who needed wide lenses against dust. Its keyhole bridge and Silver Arrow hinge became instantly recognizable on their own terms, and then more recognizable still when Marcello Mastroianni wore the 649 on screen, cementing it as cinema's own eyewear.

None of the three houses set out to make a costume. A jacket for riders, a watch for navy frogmen, sunglasses for tram drivers — each solved its working problem well enough that a director eventually pointed a camera at it, and the rest of the world has been buying the film's version ever since.

Paris · Florence · Turin

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