Do you now or have you ever worn Levi's as the foundation of your wardrobe?

[yurbud]

From the time until I was old enough recognize brand names until probably the early 90s, Levi's blue jeans were my default pants, including for weddings (just add sweater and tie). Now, apart from my stepdad who is a retired longshoreman, I hardly ever see anyone wearing them.

It might be because I'm here in Southern California and a lot of the time jeans of any kind are too warm to wear.

But I'm wondering what happened to this cultural icon that used to be as ubiquitous as the fez in Turkey.

It used to be everyone had the "shrink to fit" ritual memorized, and the only way you could get faded ones was to wear the crap out of them (at which point they became a badge of honor). Maybe it was the pre-washed then acid washing that did them in.

And I still measure my weight gain for my Levi period by the size of my pants more than the pounds I put on.

[WindRavenX]

1. luuuurve levis

too bad they're so damn $$$

Otherwise, I DO wear jeans everyday :D

[KitchenWitch]

2. LOVE Levi's jeans

Yes, they are a foundation of my winter wardrobe in SoCal.

[wildhorses]

3. have a pair on right now and it is 70 degrees here

love my levi's:thumbsup:

[SPKrazy]

4. Levis Rock!

lurve them I do!

[yurbud]

5. the mistress that stole my heart away: cargo pants

I teach college, so I carry around a lot of pens, and I have a sidekick phone which is too bulky to put in front pocket, and I prefer to avoid hanging crap off my belt.

If they made Levi's with even small slit cargo pockets on each leg, I'd be back in the five buttons in a flash.

[Left Is Write]

6. More than one answer applies to me. I have worn Levi's in the past...

but it was not a "must have" brand for me EXCEPT when it came to the jean jacket I had in high school.

I haven't worn Levi's in years, but I still do wear jeans almost every day.

[yurbud]

8. owning the jacket makes you a bishop in the church of Levi

[yurbud]

7. forgot one of their greatest benefits: you never have to worry about pants coming unzipped

you button up those five buttons, and they aren't coming undone someone puts their hands on them specifically to undo them, and sometimes, not even then.

By contrast, with zip pants, the last thing I do before I walk in a room touch my fly to make sure it's zipped up.

[Oeditpus Rex]

9. I prefer Wranglers

They fit us skinny guys better.

[yurbud]

10. I knew some real cowboys, and they wore wranglers too for higher waist & less plumbers crack

[Oeditpus Rex]

11. I never noticed that

But their Slim Fit™ give me more butt.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

12. levis is the foundation of my gf's wardrobe..i dont really wear jeans

[5thGenDemocrat]

13. None of the answers fit me (heh) exactly

I still own a few pairs of jeans, some Levis and some not -- but I usually wear military fatigue pants these days. They're cooler in the summer and baggy enough I can wear long undies under them in the winter. Or wear the German wool field pants, I suppose.
John
Prefers comfort over fashion.

[GenDem]

14. In the mid-70's when I was coming of age....

there just wasn't another brand that you would get caught dead in. I remember around 1974 or 75 we shopped for our Levi's at a store called "The Shed House". Even though I am female we all wore the male jeans...my size was 28/32. I cheated with the fading and sometimes washed them a few more times than I needed too. When they wore out significantly they were cut off with scissors and we all fringed them to perfection and wore them another couple years as shorts. I loved my Levi's!!!:loveya:

Great post...I have spent the last few minutes reminiscing.:hi:

[u4ic]

15. This option:

I owned jeans when I was younger, but now find them uncomfortable.

I can deal with stretch denim, but not classic denim. I hate the feel of them; they are far too heavy and confining for my taste. For most of my adult life I haven't owned a pair of jeans.

Brand doesn't matter to me, nor has it ever. For a time when I did wear jeans, I liked the Eaton's brand, before they went under.

I have one pair of jeans now, which I rarely wear; the exception being very cold days. I do have a couple of pairs of stretch denim; one is black, the other brown herringbone. Blue just isn't my colour.

[idgiehkt]

28. me too

I hate them. It's nice to know I'm not the only one. They are just too yucky feeling, too hard to find that fit right. Nothing on earth makes me feel more like a freak than trying to find a pair of blue jeans to fit me. It's weird because I lived in Levi's cords all through my 20's and early 30's until I moved out of the mountains where it's really too hot for them.

[u4ic]

31. I find they

restrict my movement because they are so heavy. No thanks.

I agree, finding a pair to fit is always an issue. The only ones that ever did well were the Eaton's brand that I mentioned above. They went under in the mid 90's, so that was the end of that.

While I lean towards casual, it's still casual-dressy. (Denim) Jeans just aren't my style, either.

[idgiehkt]

35. well, I had hips back in the 80's before it was legal.

So any pair that I found that was big enough in the hips was too big in my waist. I was born way too soon. I have straight shiny hair and hips...I soshould have been a generation Y girl. The fact that I was born to be a teen in the 80's era of skeletal frames and big hair just proves to me this is my purgatory.

[graywarrior]

16. I even wer them in 80 degree Florida. They're my "uniform"

[Nicole]

17. I used to wear them everyday

Levi big bells in my youth.

I still wear jeans everyday but not always Levis.

Edit:
Except summer time. I rarely wear jeans in the summer.

[Deja Q]

18. At least I've never worn these...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbHlMbe6DtI

[samplegirl]

19. If you grew up wearing Levi's

chances are you will always find a pair hanging in ones closet.
Even though they are not "the popular" brand. I still own two pair.

[bigwillq]

20. Jeans in general, yes

Not always Levis

[ForrestGump]

21. Used to live in them. Went through phases, though

I grew up in jeans, and my favorite brand as I got older was Levis (for practical reasons: they were the toughest, lasted the longest, and I needed tough pants for the outdoor rough-and-tumbling I did...when I was a bit older, and had my first motorcycle crash, my trusty Levis remained intact even though I was bleeding under them). For a long time, as a kid, I lived in shorts and T-shirts no matter what the weather, but even then I'd sometimes wear a denim jacket and -- back then -- denim shorts were a big part of my wardrobe. For most of my teen years I wore Levis jeans and jackets and in my 20s I kept that up, alternating with leather jackets when I was riding my motorcycle (and sometimes just when I felt like wearing leather). When I first came to the US and traveled around I wore mostly the same all-denim ensemble, but this time without a shirt and with a black silk scarf wrapped around my neck and tucked into the jacket -- I'm not quite sure from where this fashion statement derived, but in the mid-'80s being all-denim wasn't exactly too trendy and I compounded my I-don't-give-a-f***ness by having my hair long and my sideburns long (not as long as the '70s Elvis ones I sport now, but level with bottom of my ear, that made them very long by mid-'80s standards...I always hated the sideburns-cut-off-at-the-top-of-the-ear look that was common then and deeply resented the idiot hairdresser for my wedding giving me almost that look). I always despised the trendy thing and with denim and with other things (cargo pants) I wore what I wanted to wear when it was out of fashion and when, inevitably, it came back into style.

When I started working more regular jobs once I got stuck in Los Angeles a few years I began to wear Dockers more and more (hey, at lest they were still Levis!), and even black dress pants -- truth be told, though, I never liked the pleated thing on pants and it seemed like that's all I could find, other than jeans, in the late '80s and early '90s. I was happy when I discovered the joy of bootcut jeans at this cowboy store in Reseda, CA, but within a few years my jeans wearing would pretty much be over (for now) because I entered graduate school and for both my field work (in the tropics) and for just general banging around I found that cargo pants were my best friends, and in the field and when it was warmer back home I used to live in either cargo shorts or nylon bathing suits (yep, I wore the swim trunks as regular shorts on a daily basis back in my base city...still do, sometimes, though I've been forced to wear long pants of one kind or another since moving to Vegas, if only because I've been getting around by motorcycle).

Cargo pants -- long and short -- declined rapidly in quality as they became trendy in the '90s, and I saw a great many nonfunctional takes on the idea (pockets that're useless, for example) as a result of their trendiness....also found it's hard to find women's cargo pants or shorts that're actually field-ready, if only because the pockets are too small to hold anything much else than a tube of lipstick. Nowadays I still wear Dockers (or similar) and cargo pants when I'm wearing non-motorcycle long pants (usually with one of my denim shorts, my finally finding soem in the '90s that didn't include a button on the collar...don't like butons on my collars), but what I wear quite a bit is a very heavy-duty pair of black jeans made by Calvin Klein. I got 'em because they were rugged, looked good, fitted me well, and were well-priced (at a Calvin Klein outlet store in Camarillo, CA).

I'm more conscious of my wardrobe than ever, mostly because of my Elvis work (and the Elvis wardrobe is a whole other story -- I've also never before been as attentive to my skin or to my overall looks than I have been as a result of my current job) but I'm still free of the tyranny of fashion and in my increasingly eclectic wardrobe I now include the lace-up pirate-style shirts I've mentioned here before, a few brightly-patterned silk shirts, a Chinese-style tuxedo shirt, Chinese silk brocade jackets with the mandarin collar and frog buttons, a Mexican peasant shirt with the embroidery all around the collar and elsewhere, a Guayabera shirt, and so one. I haven't worn most of them much or at all because until just recently I've hardly ever been out when I wasn't either dressed in protective leather or dressed as Elvis, but they're there. One day, maybe, I'll get back in blue jeans...

[GoddessOfGuinness]

22. I never could find any that fit right.

If they were big enough in the hips, they were too huge in the waist.

[Nikia]

25. That's one of the things I like about them (their hip to waist measurements)

I'm the type though that hip huggers that I think are my size fall off of me to the floor. Everyone is different though and every brand seems different in fit. That is why I never buy jeans without trying them on.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

26. That's the way it goes with pants...

at least for women, I don't know about guys.

[Crabby Appleton]

23. Wrangler "boot cut"

[Nikia]

24. I currently have 2 pairs that I wear regularly

I usually wear jeans on the weekend and when I get home from work. They seem to be much more classic than some of the other brands. I bought my Levis at JC Penny's last year. They seemed reasonably priced.

[Heidi]

27. Yes. 501s. (nt)

[JohnnyLib2]

29. As a boy in the west in the 50s,

anything else was unusual and suspect. The new ones chafed and turned your
thighs blue when wet. And we thought that was normal, as I remember.

[MonkeyFunk]

30. It's a rare occasion

I wear anything other than jeans.

[Silver Swan]

32. Never wore Levis

I wear jeans every day--I'm retired--but I have never owned a pair of Levi jeans.

Way back in the early 1960's, when my jean wearing habits began, Levi women's jeans were too short. I am not super tall (5'6") and I have short legs. I liked jeans that came to my ankle bone, and Levi's didn't make it. They were apparently made for the classic 5'3" girl.

Back then, women's jeans did not come in different lengths, except that bigger sizes were sometimes longer than smaller sizes. If a woman wanted jeans in different lengths, she could always wear men's jeans, I guess.

Rejecting Levis became a habit which I have never overcome.

Now that all jeans seem to be made so long that even short length is almost too long for me, I think back to the old days with wonder.

[Arkansas Granny]

33. I can't remember how long I've been wearing Levi's. At least

since the 60's. I'm lucky enough to work in a very casual office where I can wear jeans to work and I still love my Levi's.

[seemunkee]

34. 505 regular cuts for I don't know how long.

Had to go up an inch or two over the years but always get the same style.
Never liked the button fly.

[NewWaveChick1981]

36. Jeans are the foundation of my non-work wardrobe, and Levi's

have always been in the mix. I own two pairs of low-rise bootcut Levi's now, and I dearly love them. :D :bounce: :toast: I'm gonna buy some more, too!

[grace0418]

37. Levis don't fit me right but my husband always wears them. Unfortunately

Levi's recently stopped making the style he loves so he may move on to another brand. When I get to my goal weight I may try them again to see if they fit the new me.

[yurbud]

39. that was another reason I had to stop wearing them. they started to look like sausage skins

[ganeshji]

38. I wear them every day.

I have a few pairs that are velvet soft.

[trackfan]

40. I wear Levi's almost every day.

I wear them to work. In the Summer, on the weekends I might eschew long pants entirely. Other than that it's Levi's at work and around the house.

[LostinVA]

41. Yes -- and thank god for ebay and Silver Tab auctions

[izzybeans]

42. I'm wearing levi's right now.

I'd say over half of my jeans and all but one pair of my corduroy pants are Levi's.

[montanto]

43. I remember when STF's were less than $20.

I mostly wear Luckys these days. I like their shirts as well.

[Jimbo S]

44. Levi's in HS + college, then switched to Lee exclusively

Lee's fit my quads better. But I do like Docker's when I need a pair of "nice" pants.

[Scarlett17]

45. In the midwest. . . .

Levi's are still considered de rigeur.

[fortyfeetunder]

46. Durablilty.

I was a lab rat in a previous life and I lived in Levi's. Jeans in the summer, cords in the winter. I didn't care if formaldehyde or some nasty acid fell on 'em...holes were fashionable!

[BreweryYardRat]

47. I have a couple pairs. But I found out they're made with sweatshop labor.

I'll stick to other brands, thank you.

[Dulcinea]

48. Yes.

550's, 29 x 32 fit me like a glove!

Pre-kids, Levis never fit me right, but now with a thicker waist than I used to have (!!) they're perfect! I have 3 pairs.

[Strawman]

49. Whatever decent looking jeans are on sale at Costco

pretty much makes the base of my wardrobe. Lots of different brands, including Levi's.