Jeans In Suburbia: White Levi’s (Ca. 1963)
I bought my first pair of jeans at – of all places – the Hill School book store. They were white. At least that’s what we called them. The company called them “White Levi’s.” It was printed right on the tag, even though they really were a light beige color. Down south they referred to them as Wheat Jeans. It’s a good description of the color, at least. I remember wearing them at home in Rumson for Christmas vacation, to a RHS basketball game. A lot of people asked, “Where’d you get those pants!” Maybe it was mostly only girls who asked. They’d heard about them, I guess, but White Levi’s hadn’t yet made it to Natelson’s or McCue’s or any of the men’s stores in Red Bank. The experience of wearing something so new and so cool was an antidote to my terrible teen-age angst. Then, when I picked up my date her old man answered the door, Martini in hand, and asked me, “Where’d you get those pants?”
A nasty old guy like that, icon of the “old” generation, stood for the kind of judgmental, conventional conservatism that we eventually rebelled against. And his Scroogey reaction to my jeans, in that mistletoe and holly-trimmed foyer, rolling his eyes and spilling his gin on the tiled entryway, embarrassed his daughter and me both. But it meant I was definitely on to something good. If this hidebound blockhead, in his Hunter green blazer with the golf-club crest on the pocket, white turtleneck and corduroy pants with the little ducks embroidered all over them, if this old fogy had a problem with what I was wearing, it meant something. That moment gave me a confidence in my own style that’s with me even today.
So it was in the 60’s, in between Bob Dylan and The Beach Boys, that the jean made it to suburbia, no longer the attire of beatniks, cowboys and coal miners. It was only a matter of time – thirty-five years or so – until fathers answering doors for their daughters’ dates, were spilling gin on a descendant of the original, these, though, “designed” by Europeans and hand-sanded to look worn-out, cost ten times what we paid for white Levi’s, about two hundred and fifty bucks..