1980s Men's jeans

[whitewall66]

Some people did stick with flares into the 1980s but were passe by 1982.

Drainpipe trousers were popular with the post punk & 60s revisal crowd.

No they didn't mate if you wore flares after 1977 you'd get the **** taken out of you mercilessly. Watching old episodes of Corrie and mentioning Curly Watts and fashion is hilarious. Here's the sort of fashions you had between 77 and 82. Punks, Teds, Soulboys, Skins, Rude Boys, Rastas, Rockabillies, Casuals, Mods, New Romantics, Goths maybe slightly later than 82 there's probably more I've missed out but the one thing they had in common was none of them wore flares. Edit : it was George 78 who mentioned Curly Watts and fashion !

[Richard1978]

Some people did stick with flares into the 1980s but were passe by 1982.

Drainpipe trousers were popular with the post punk & 60s revisal crowd.

[whitewall66]

When men stopped wearing flared jeans at the start of the 1980s, a lot of them wore stretch jeans that were mostly fashionable from around 1980 to 1986.

I used to think that Shakin' Stevens was probably the most famous person to wear them, and as I can see from the ITV 3 repeats of Coronation Street, Kevin Webster, and sometimes Curly Watts wore them as well. They were everywhere, male characters from series like the Dukes of Hazard and even Prisoner: Cell Block H was seen with them on. I still think of them as "cool", and it's a pity that you could probably buy a pair of flares from the years before in these retro fashion shops that I sometimes see, but not 1980s jeans like that, probably because they don't look ironic enough a flares did.

The Wrangler and Levis adverts from the early to mid 1980s looked "sexier" than jeans adverts did later on that decade. I think that ended when we saw Nick Kamen go in the bath while wearing his, the tune to Sam Cooke's Wonderful World, or the launderette one, as parodied by Carling Black Label, straining to the tune of Marvin Gaye's big 1969 hit.

I suppose that now we see skinny jeans (and I even have a couple of pairs myself), probably because of the Vamps and One Direction, men's fashion has almost come full-circle in the past 35 years.

I am hoping that they might come back into fashion, considering that skinny jeans have done so. I remember trying to get a pair for a photo shoot I was doing a few years ago, but no luck. Water under the bridge fashion-wise, methinks.

Mate nobody wore flares after 1977 when punk came in certainly not young people and I don't think Shakin Stevens is someone to be mentioned when it comes to fashion. You might see someone like Dennis Waterman wearing flared jeans in Minder but he was in his 30's when it started. What a lot of young people wore back then in the early 80's when the casual scene came in where Lois Cords and in the late 70's Farah slacks. Flares did come back in the late 80's when the baggy Madchester scene started with groups like the Happy Mondays and the Stone Roses.

[George 1978]

I would love to know if there is a retro fashion shop that sells them - I would gladly give them my measurements if they did !

[George 1978]

Regarding Bottom Line clothes shops, there's an ad break on the Kaleidoscope's Presentation Vault page of YouTube for the LWT region for Friday 19th June 1981 (downloaded on 19th June this year), and there is an advert for Bottom Line, mostly selling jeans (and of course stretch jeans as well being 1981) with a Kenny Everett voiceover - I have to admit that I thought that it was an advert for Woolworths when it started.

[George 1978]

Re: 1980s Men's jeans

Since I started this thread, I contacted a few retro fashion shops in my area, and none of them sell those jeans. Typical.

[Silver Bear]

Re: 1980s Men's jeans

Looking at the old Express and Mirror newspapers on the UK Press Online website, I saw an advertisement from an July or August 1981 issues of one of those newspapers for a clothes shop called Bottom Line, which sold jeans similar to the ones that I described above - they did Levis, Wranglers as well as own-name brand ones. I had never heard of them, and I doubt they were around the year before or had made it to 1982 before closing down for good. There were two stores on Oxford Street in London, and the Nottingham store was at Lister Gate (it is now a Carphone Warehouse as I can see).

Anyone remember Bottom Line clothes shops?

Yes I do remember that store on Oxford Street

[George 1978]

Re: 1980s Men's jeans

Looking at the old Express and Mirror newspapers on the UK Press Online website, I saw an advertisement from an July or August 1981 issues of one of those newspapers for a clothes shop called Bottom Line, which sold jeans similar to the ones that I described above - they did Levis, Wranglers as well as own-name brand ones. I had never heard of them, and I doubt they were around the year before or had made it to 1982 before closing down for good. There were two stores on Oxford Street in London, and the Nottingham store was at Lister Gate (it is now a Carphone Warehouse as I can see).

Anyone remember Bottom Line clothes shops?

[CrystalBall]

Re: 1980s Men's jeans

Anyone here remember Easy jeans? They were a UK-based brand widely available in the 1980s/early 1990s and mid-priced like Lee. I used to buy them a lot from the likes of Burton and Debenhams because they were reasonably priced, decent quality and the style and fit always seemed just right. I did some research and there is not a lot about them out there, but I did discover that they were once the 5th biggest jeans brand in the UK and a major supplier of jeans to Levi Strauss. I wonder what happened to them?

[George 1978]

Re: 1980s Men's jeans

I am thinking about contacting a local retro clothes store to see whether they sell these jeans.

[Twocky61]

Re: 1980s Men's jeans

I've always preferred the narrow 'drain pipe' jeans

[Richard1978]

Re: 1980s Men's jeans

I remember buying by first black jeans branded 51st State from a market stall, & trying them on in the back of a van.

[staffslad]

Re: 1980s Men's jeans

I had at least 2 pairs of stretch jeans in the 80s. I can't remember the brands but they wouldn't have been anything well known. One pair I remember buying from a market stall and trying them on for size in the back of the stall-owner's Transit van. Phew, they were tight.

[George 1978]

Re: 1980s Men's jeans

I bought some denim jodhpurs from one of those equestrian websites a while ago, and I thought that they were just as good as those sort of jeans could be.

I was looking at my recording of the 1984 film Supergirl (not to be confused with the Sky series that is on at the moment), and 47 minutes or so in, you can see Hart Bochner as Ethan wearing some Lee jeans in the film similar the ones that I had mentioned above - you can even see the Lee logo on the back of them if you look very carefully and freeze frame it at the right part. It's great that Lee Jeans gets a mention as a credit at the end of the film - it was if he was officially wearing those jeans, and that he was just as much a model as he was an actor.

[Richard1978]

Re: 1980s Men's jeans

I've found some jeans I've tried on recently are too tight for my legs.

Lee was another big brand back then, I had some Ramblers, which sound like a Wrangers rip-off.

Later in the 1980s show washed jeans were fashionable, something I'm not bothered if they come back!