Levi’s is on a mission to help consumers love their jeans for decades, not seasons.
The adventures of a pair of jeans, their versatility and durability, was summed up beautifully in chick flick movies The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants.
Four best girlfriends hatch a plan to stay connected with one another as their lives start off in different directions by passing around a pair of second-hand jeans that fits each of their bodies perfectly.
While the one size fits all part of the story doesn’t really wash, the adventures this pair of jeans subsequently goes through and survives certainly hold true.
And it’s more perfectly summed up in a brilliant new video just released by Levi’s which shows why wearing a pair of Levi’s 501 jeans is as relevant and wearable today as it was in the 1960s.
The cinematic short film tracks a pair of jeans from their original owner through the generations, passing into different hands, op shops and gaining character through colour fading or rips and tears along the way. Transformed through the decades with each owner, adapting to the style of the times.
The film is part of Levi’s “Buy Better, Wear Longer” campaign which builds on the brand’s long-term commitment to making fashion more sustainable and prolonging the lifespan of its products.
“A pair of Levi’s ages beautifully, engaging generation after generation, with a few tweaks and changes. Timeless and versatile, yet fashionable – no matter the decade. This message is more relevant today than ever before, when we’re all thinking how we can contribute to a more sustainable future,” says Levi’s global chief marketing officer Karen Riley-Grant.
The Buy Better, Wear Longer campaign is both a plea and a promise. It’s a plea for consumers to be more intentional about their purchasing decisions and to look for ways to rewear, repurpose, and hold on to their clothes as long as possible, before passing them down to future generations. And it’s a commitment from the brand to continue its work on numerous fronts to be responsible stewards of the natural resources we use, to innovate across its design and manufacturing platforms to become more sustainable, and to move towards more circular products and practices across the board.
Climate, consumption, and community are at the core of Levi’s approach to sustainability, and Levi’s is pursuing a variety of initiatives to support this vision: Investment in materials such as Cottonised Hemp and Organic Cotton, which reduce water consumption; pioneering Water<Less manufacturing in denim; launching the SecondHand resale platform and featuring in-store tailors to repair and repurpose garments.
Most of all, Levi’s has open-sourced their learnings and tools to affect broader change.
Today, Levi’s continues to work alongside partners and leaders like Fashion for Good and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation to help shift the industry to a more circular model and Levi’s R&D lab, Wellthread, constantly searches for radical new ways to make clothes that can reduce its environmental footprint.
“Reconfiguring supply chains takes time but we have found partners that are as concerned about their footprint, and are as excited to experiment as us. These collaborations have allowed us to introduce more circularity in how we make our products,” says Paul Dillinger, Levi’s vice president, head of global product innovation.
