So, Oliver. STOP buying jeans. Gimme (again, I lost it) your email address. I will see what I can do. As you come to Vienna this fall I might have a solution for you. Wait until I am going to contact you. Will you do that?
Here's what a pair of 1960's Wranglers supposedly look like half a century later: http://www.ebay.ca/itm/301850173299
East European Ivy!
I'm sure you could just buy a pair that look like that in TK Maxx, sorry but they are bloody awful.
Oh I agree man... I wasn't making any statement about them; just posting what a fifty-year-old pair of Wranglers eventually looks like. I'd go pantless before I put on a pair of Forever 21 looking stone washed jeans.
Ringo's on the money there for me - if he undid his jacket top button and had a pair of loafers on he'd be unbeatable (it is a beach to be fair)
Great collar roll on his shirt too
Yep, we once dicussed that on here... Loafers or probably Dessies...
George and Paul do wear Wranglers as far as I know... John Lee Riders. No Levi's, here in Europe nobody had Levi's...
Last edited by Leer R. (2016-02-16 03:43:15)
Yeah, John had Levi's in the end... but in 1965 here in Europe you could get sand/stone coloured Lee Jeans and Wranglers. Stop. Really... Stan, look into your PM account.
Last edited by Leer R. (2016-02-16 12:46:12)
I wonder if John's striped sport coat is cotton madras.
/\ good question ... I wonder what kind of (boat?) shoes he's wearing ... speaking of the harshest possible Oxiclean treatment, look at George's jeans ... bleach accident at one time .....
Uk is not Europe - ok, Europe was too widely mentioned. I definitely should have quoted "Austria".
In Austria they were definitely not available for a long time, and I remember Liam quoting that there was a Wrangler factory in Ireland - so most had Wranglers in Scotland and they were also easily available. Levi's weren't as easy to get back then (at least in Scotland I suppose).
There was one jeans store in Vienna that still exists but it is a crappy crap store these days. It is called "Turek" and it's owner started to import jeans around 1960 - and the brands were Wrangler and Lee.
Levis' were available later on, I think from the late 60s to early 70s and those were primarily Orange Tabs (flared ones I suppose). But I think Levi's 501 STF, too as my mother mentioned that she had jeans that had to be shrunk in the tub but that was around 1970... The real 501 boom started in the 80s. Before that most people in Austria didn't have Levis' 501s...
Sorry about that misinformation I simply took Austria for other European countries, too - but Austria still lived in some kind of middle age back then
It is interesting that the Beatles wore Wranglers and Lees though and no Levis' until a certain point.
EDIT: At least Keith Richards and Eric Clapton did wear Levis' from 1966 on.
Last edited by Leer R. (2016-02-17 04:47:39)
Wrangler, Lee and Levis all had either licensed production or their own factories in the UK by 1967 but European distribution was a nightmare even up until the 1980s, a mix of independent European wholesalers importing in bulk from the USA competing directly with the actual manufacturers own European made products.
The Hiut company recently took advantage of a bit of this heritage,
when the work for the 'big three' got outsourced again to the Far-East in the mid-90s many of the workforce were made redundant
so when Hiut went into production the reservoir of skills that locals in South Wales had from years of producing jeans for these major players gave them a massive head start .
Wrangler had major production bases in Ireland, Scotland and the South East of England.
When the Japanese wanted to do a repro Wrangler/BlueBell range they had to go back to Scotland as it was the only one of their factories with the original 60s custom built equipment still in operation ( it'd been thought too expensive to upgrade in the 80s and the factory was actually being wound down when the repro craze hit) and this gave them a new lease of life,
their success meant they also ended up producing many of the early Lee japanese re-issues ( the horse-hide patches on those came from a tannery near Newcastle, which still produces them today ).
Nope