Stay Tuned/Remembrance Of Jeans Past

Before starting this, I should offer full disclosure: I wear no other brand of jeans but Levi's 501s. I like the style, and they're the only brand which consistently fits after they're washed. I've been wearing them for years.

Now that I've revealed that, I can talk about how bizarre the latest Levi's trend is. Levi Strauss & Co has begun to manufacture exact replicas of their jeans the way they originally looked - way back at the turn of the century. The jeans are rougher and heavier than today's fabric, and they're being made in limited quantities - partially for boutique value, and partly because Levi's is milling the fabric on the original 28-inch looms used in the early 1900's.

These jeans apparently cost somewhere in the neighborhood of two hundred dollars a pair. Sadder still, people will probably buy them. Levi's is acting in response to reports that people scour vintage clothing stores looking for pre-1971 Levi's jeans, collecting and hoarding them. Those in the know have been known to roll the cuffs up (my source says) so other cognoscenti can see the red selvage - a line of stitches on the sides of the sideseam. Post-1971 Levi's don't have this. Another sign, although you'll have to get up close and personal to see it: In 1971 the letter "E" on the little red "Levi's" tag went from upper to lower case.

Can you believe there are people who care about these things? People who will pay hundreds of dollars for old jeans (and not always pairs in good condition, either)?

It may be that damned nostalgia problem again.

Everywhere you look, you see brands invoking an era gone by. It doesn't matter which niche. If they're appealing to a certain age group, they invoke the eighties or seventies; for hedonism they invoke the sixties, for stability the fifties and forties, for patriotic appeal the thirties, and the twenties for hedonism again. Each decade to its own stereotype.

In truth, none of those decades were better or worse than the one we're almost done with now. Ten years is a long time. Each decade had its embarrassments and triumphs, its fads and its lasting influences, its technological innovations.

What has changed is our collective outlook. And our attention span.

Is there anyone who is willing to say, as there were in the sixties, that now is the high point of American civilization? Is there anyone willing to say that they're happier now than they were ten years ago, that their life has improved?

Of course not. That necessarily involves taking the long view. And we're not good at that anymore. Just watch Congress and you'll see what I mean. We exist for the short term.

Without the long view, you can't have any sense of perspective. So all the old stuff keeps looking good. The advertisers shrug and give the people what they want to hear.

Never mind that we were in the fiscal dumps through almost all of the thirties, when we weren't overseas dying; that the fifties were a time of extreme social and political conformity and repression, that the sixties brought Vietnam, et cetera. That's not important.

Oh, never mind. I'm too cranky to write any more now.

For what it's worth: I wouldn't go back ten years, no, not if you paid me. Want a prescription for the upcoming millennium? I recommend trying to make a clean break with the current one.

[February 2007:] I can't remember now what Levi's called their throwback line at the time, but from prodding around their consumer site (the link above is a corporate site), it looks like the throwbacks have evolved into the Capital E line - please see the comment about the E on the red tag, above - where each pair is apparently entirely handmade. The Capital E take on the standard 501 jean is "Artisan-made in North Carolina on antique narrow looms," which seems to jibe with the material above. However, there is also (though you have to dig a bit to find it) a Levi's Vintage Clothing line, which seems to focus more on reproducing styles from the 1950's and 1960's.

By the by, as of this writing, the price in their online store for Capital E men's 501's was $192.

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