What was the deal with orange-tab Levis?
I don’t think the company even sells these in the U.S. anymore, but for a time, if you wanted straightleg Levis, you could either have the traditional red-label ones, with all the rivets, the fifth pocket, the button fly, and leather patch, or you could buy ones that had an orange label on the back pocket, one less rivet, and had a distinctly different shape to the back pockets. A variation of those had no rivets and no fifth pocket, like the old bell bottoms.
I don’t think the orange-tab ones were as well made; at least the denim didn’t seem to have the same toughness, or beautiful color when faded. I never bought them myself, so I’m wondering, what was their selling point? Why did some people choose them?
Note: I do see them still for sale on Levis’ Canadian website, so maybe someone from there can tell me.
They were around 50% cheaper than Red Tab Levis. It’s been a while since I’ve bought a pair of Levis but I think Reds were around $65 and Oranges were around $30. I don’t think the fabric was as high quality though. As a boy coming from a family that didn’t have a whole stash of money, we waited for Levis to go on sale at Zellers for like $20 and then we’d each buy a couple of pairs. No point in spending $65 for pants I was going to grow out of in 6 months.
$65.00? Ouch.
Oh wait, different currency.
I thought that price might be the selling point, but I wasn’t able to confirm it from the Canadian website.
Oddly enough I wore the orange label bell bottoms pretty much throughout the 70s, then switched to straightleg reds in the 80s, so I never really looked at both kinds at the same time in order to be able to compare the prices. Of course, by 1980 I was done with college and fully grown, and didn’t have to worry about outgrowing things. Levis being what they are, I’d get years of wear out of one pair, so price wasn’t a major influence on what I chose.
$65 for Levi’s? Good grief! I remember when I was in junior high school, and Levi’s weren’t “cool”. They cost about $20/pair. Then, in high school, they became cool again, and the price started going up. I thought $40 was bad.
of course, Levi’s in junior high would still have been cooler than the Sears Toughskins my mom made me wear…
Kid_A’s Canadian, and that price must be in Canadian dollars. At today’s rate, though, that’s $49 American, so I doubt if anyone’s going north of the border to buy Levis (or red label ones, anyway).
I remember reading that the orange tabs were specifically made as a lighterweight and therefore cheaper jean than the red tabs.
I bought a pair of bootcut orange tabs (in the states) around 6 or 7 years ago, if memory serves me correctly. I think that I tossed them because the knee blew out, but they were a comfortable weight while they lasted.