Wardrobe Hero: Levi’s 501 jeans
Anyone can make a pair of blue jeans, but Levi Strauss & Co. are the only ones who can lay claim to making the first blue jeans. In 1873, they designed the blue jean that started it all. One of the most important pieces in a man’s wardrobe today, the blue jean is one of the only items of clothing to survive from its creation in the 19th century to the 21st century almost totally unchanged. They may not have invented the cut or fit of the overalls, but what they did do, however, was take the traditional men’s work trousers and rivet them, creating an entirely new category of workwear.
The 501s leaped to attention during the renowned airing of the ‘501 Blues’ television advertising campaign during the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. The advert in question featured a young Nick Kamen (a forefather of Ray Petri’s Buffalo collective along with Jean-Baptiste Mondino, his brother Barry Kamen and Mark Lebon) striping down to just a pair of white Sunspel boxers in the middle of a mid-town laundrette, to the backdrop of Marvin Gaye’s I Heard It Through The Grapevine. This marked the first of a series of Bartle Bogle Hegarty advertisements that dramatically increased the popularity of Levi’s 501s. The commercial, directed by Roger Lyons, serves as a reminder of the rebellious nature from which the 501 stemmed.
From adorning the lower halves of those protesting against the Vietnam War, to young men and women wearing 501s while protesting for civil rights in the 60s to show their solidarity for the working classes, to iconic images of the fall of the Berlin Wall where yet again one is met with a wave of blue jean clad youth wearing nothing but 501s; they were a sign of solidarity as much as rebellion.
Teenage antihero Marlon Brando motorbiked his way across film screens in 501s in the 1953 The Wild One And although less of a rebel and more of sex symbol, it would be sacrilegious not to mention Marilyn Monroe who filled out a pair of 501s in The Misfits, worn with a denim Lee Storm rider jacket and tousled pigtails. Double denim devotee Bruce Springsteen put Levi’s 501 jeans on the cover of Born in the USA and wore them on tour in July 1985 at Wembley.
OUR PICKS
Levi’s 501 Marlon, £60 (sale) from House of Fraser // Levi’s 501 Hook, £75 from John Lewis // Levi’s 501 Black, £70 from John Lewis
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