501s - history

The most famous jeans are still probably those produced by Levi as Levi 501s. Pre shrunk jeans had been introduced in the 1960s. 501s traditional button fly jeans designed in the Victorian era need to be shrunk to fit. They were a huge hit again in the 1980s when reintroduced to a new generation.
In a 1980′s television advertisement Nick Kamen removed his jeans and stripped to his underpants at a launderette. He proceeded to launder the jeans making them ‘shrink to fit’ to the music of Marvin Gaye’s ‘I heard it through the grapevine’. Kamen helped make jeans into a new fashion item for a new generation with the clear link to sexual allure.