Quality, a Levi’s advert proudly proclaimed years ago, never goes out of style. But in India, the newest and the most happening apparel market this side of the Atlantic, Levi’s iconic 501 button-fly line of jeans has met with a sad demise.
Stores across India have stopped showcasing the original, vintage 501 — all of 18 ounce, dark or medium indigo, riveted pocket corners, the trademark button fly — which has been replaced with poor (quality) clones of hideous colours and design repulsive to any denim lover’s aesthetic sense.
The Jeans Genealogy
In the west — America, in particular — not since the ’80s heyday of Levi’s 501s has the perfectly faded, blue jean been so revered by the fashion elite and worn so consciously by consumers alike. Because in the beginning there was Levi’s.
The San Francisco-based manufacturers neatly married form and function which subsequent generations of the original founder Levi Strauss & Company found no need to alter. For decades, the 501 was a style-statement that people referred to when they sought to make a point about how pervasive a brand can be.
Denim prices have gone up in the US, but next to GAP, Levi’s new-look 501s continue to be embraced by the young and the middle-aged in the year of its 142nd anniversary. Fashion aficionados and consumers have turned their “backs” on the skinny jeans, heralding its classic cut, still relevant nearly a century-and-a-half since the jean and the rivet were patented in San Francisco.
And yet in India, where Levi’s first forayed into the denim industry as recently as the mid-nineties, it is not gaining new fans.
The Great Indian Jeans Malfunction
What is ironic, and unfortunate, is that while the rest of the west is celebrating a comeback of the 501 on its anniversary — launch of the first ever non-denim 501s in May last year and a website that features pictures of men and women in their 501s — in India, a quiet burial seems to have been given to the vintage jean that stirred entire generations to slip into the relaxed legs, high waists and the button flies for a distinctive crotch.
In 2013, the ostensible reason for discontinuing the original 501s in Indian stores was that that they last so long — never mind the frayed pockets, rears and flair edges — that they make other products less attractive to buyers, especially teenagers and men in their 30s. Durability, the 501’s USP, has driven the death knell.
But more than durability, the explosion of the denim industry and the sprouting of many jeans brands, some desi, some fake, peddling the designer and skinny varieties besides other regular cuts truly led to the 501’s demise.
And now, the relaunched 501 has become unwearable: far from the rugged and hard-wearing original jeans, the 501s now available in Levi’s stores across India are tapered at the ankles and an inch tighter at the thighs. Gone is the original template – the classic straight cut in dark rinsed or stone-washed. Even the straight stitch for the rear pockets has been replaced by a curvy run of the thread.
Yes, it’s the details that make the difference, especially among generations of men and women for whom a pair of 501 is, apart from the fit, a great deal more about how it looks.
The 501 is no longer the icon of cool. Its fabled history does not seem any longer important to the identity and marketing agenda of Levis Strauss.
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