The Renaissance of Levi’s 501 Jeans
In recent years skinny and super skinny jeans have ruled the roost. Roomier styles like boyfriend jeans have had brief flirtations with popularity but spray on styles still predominate. In a world of skimpy fits and low waists iconic favourites like the Levi’s 501 have faded into the background. They have never quite gone away, though, and remain popular with an older generation who wore them in their heyday. Now, however, something of a renaissance could be on the cards.
Mom jeans saw a return for higher waists. Meanwhile celebrities started to sport the iconic 501 but customised them a little to add a new twist to what could now be described as a vintage style. Legs were tapered to change the profile of the jeans and naturally this practice began to be copied by fashionistas. Levi’s didn’t get where they are today by ignoring trends and so it should come as no surprise that the 501 style is being re-launched with some modifications to reflect what is happening on the street.
Levi Strauss 501 CT
The new 501 CT (customised and tapered) is available is three different washes and features a squarer waist than the original 501 together with tapered legs. It is an interesting move, no doubt calculated to inspire renewed interest in the classic 501 jean and the timing of the re-launch is probably perfect.
Fashion commentators are predicting a comeback for slim fit jeans in 2015. The style is beginning to resurface in the ranges of high street chains like Uniqlo and so perhaps we are about to see the skinny jean usurped by high waist slim cuts at least for a season or two.
Slim Fit Jeans
Slim fit jeans are neither baggy like boyfriend cuts or figure hugging like the stretch skinnies that have been everywhere for some time. They are the middle ground and, to be honest, rather nondescript. But then nondescript seems to be the order of the day on the high street. We are hardly in an era like the 80’s when flamboyance was the height of cool. Everything is so uniform, monochrome and dull at the moment and so jeans that are neither one thing nor the other are an obvious choice. If the trend does prove to have legs then nondescript is about to become decidedly cool.
Cool or Uncool?
Perhaps I am being unfair. Levi’s 501 jeans have been an enormous success story and there is actually something different about them – the button fly. You don’t see those very often and there is an entire generation who have yet to discover the joys of fiddling with those oversized rivet-like buttons and then inevitably deciding to leave most of them undone.
Levi’s 501 jeans will always have a place in the fashion landscape and many dedicated followers. They occupy the middle ground which makes them in many ways the ultimate jeans, the jeans of the people, the jeans that always have a place. The 501 CT collection offers a new twist but in many ways this defeats the object of 501’s. Their success was built on their ordinariness, their utilitarian nature and so the idea of customising them is jarring. It is like trying to make lime green the new black because whatever you say, it just isn’t and never will be.