Levis Departs

The usual suspects are bemoaning this week's closure of the last Levi's manufacturing plant in the US. Levis Jeans will now be made overseas.

"This week, the last of the Levi Strauss & Co. manufacturing plants in the United States will close, fading this American icon like a pair of its own 501s.
The struggling denim company has announced that the last two of its U.S. factories, near downtown San Antonio, will shut their doors, leaving 800 employees out of work and ending an American tradition that began 150 years ago. Although the company's headquarters in San Francisco will remain open, and contract work at some U.S. plants will continue, the bulk of the $4.2 billion company's jeans will be manufactured by suppliers in 50 other nations -- including countries in Asia and the Caribbean, where labor is cheaper.
That Levi's will now be manufactured overseas signals to some pop culture observers the death of an institution, one that has been stitched into American imagery like the little red Levi's tag.
'It's an end of an era,' said Patricia Leavy, assistant professor of sociology at Stonehill College in Easton, Mass. 'More than any other garment in pop culture, Levi's are symbolic of America. They've come to represent some of the ideals this country is based on. Equality: Anyone can afford to wear them, everyone does wear them -- kids, adults, any age, any race.
'Taking this all-American thing, which is being produced by Americans and American laborers, out of the country, you change the meaning of it,' said Leavy, who teaches a one-day class on the history of blue jeans. 'Even if people still buy it, it's not the same thing."

Especially if that thing is crap.

Look - I'm all about national symbols, and holding on to the meaning of those symbols.

It's just that Levis 501 is the wrong icon to pick. Every pair of 501s I ever owned -back when I bothered buying clothes anywhere but Target - were overpriced, and tended to fall apart very, very quickly. I'd never buy another pair of them for love or money.

Adios, Levis. Don't let the door hit you in the stitched logo on the way out.

(Does anyone else grok the irony of a company in relentlessly-PC San Francisco outsourcing overseas?)

Posted by Mitch at January 7, 2004 05:28 AM