Recapturing faded youth

Press, 28 November 1988, Page 12

Recapturing faded youth

STREETWISE teenagers, hunky young men and blues music are the usual stuff of jeans advertisements — traditionally aimed at the young and rebellious. No longer. Levi Strauss’s latest television advertising campaign in America shows a father teaching his son to fish. In another, a rabbit pops out of a hole in the snowy ground as a man mends a fence. For the first time, Levi Strauss’s advertising is being aimed squarely at men in their 30s and 40s — the baby boomers who first adopted denim as the unofficial uniform of youth. After growing rapidly in the 1960 s and 19705, the American jeans market faded in the early 1980 s: the number of pairs of jeans (broadly designed to include denim and other fabrics) sold fell from a peak of 502 million in 1981 — the height of the designer jeans boom — to

416 million in 1985. Sales stabilised in the following two years. But this year, the market seems to have got the blues again with total jeans sales down another 7 per cent. This has prompted Levi Strauss and Wrangler to announce cutbacks. Within the jeans total, sales of denim jeans (about 85%) have held up slightly better since 1985, helped by the launch of new fabric finishes such as stone and acid washing, and the success of Levi’s reintroduction of its flybutton 501 jeans. Why have sales of jeans shrunk in the 1980 s? One reason is that designer jeans have fallen from favour. Another, more important factor, is the changing demographic make-up of America. The number of 14-24-year-olds — the biggest wearers of jeans — is shrinking. By 1990 there

From a correspondent in New York for the “Economist”

will be 16 per cent fewer American males in this age group than in 1980. By contrast, the number of 25-44-year-olds is expected to grow by 30 per cent. This is bad news for jeans manufacturers: the average male 14-25-year-old buys twice as many pairs each year as do those over 24. Levi Strauss, which got into the business 100 years ago when its founder sold trousers made from tent canvas to Californian gold panners, still dominates the market with about a quarter of American'sales. To maintain that it must now try to court the aging baby boomers, who have traded in Levis for trendier (and baggier) tracksuits or casual slacks. Levi’s message is that jeans are still best — if perhaps in a slightly more generous size. Copyright — The Economist