Not all but several jeans like Levi’s, have their label on the waistline. They also have loops for a belt.
I assume the label is supposed to remain visible.
If one wears a belt then the label gets hidden under the it.
Why put a label at such a location? Or am I not supposed to wear a belt? I don’t think the latter is correct because we do have wide belts that are suitable only for the big loops on jeans.
I can’t claim to know exactly what the manufacturers were thinking, but i quite like the fact that i can wear a pair of jeans without being forced to advertise to the world what brand i’m wearing. I generally prefer my clothing to have no visible labels at all, because when i pay for a shirt or a pair of pants, i shouldn’t be obliged to act as a walking billboard for the company that i’ve just given my money to. If Levis moved that large rectangular label to a more visible place, i would be unlikely to buy the product.
Also, it’s not like Levis have no visible label at all. My pairs of Levis jeans all have a small red tab on the back right pocket that identifies the brand. It’s small enough to be unobtrusive, so it doesn’t worry me too much. I’ve thought about cutting it off before, but have never bothered.
As Bijou Drains says, i have also had pairs of Levis in the past where the belt could go under the label, although i never wore it that way. On my current pairs, you can’t do this.
A slight hijack: When I was in elementary school in the 1970s, there was a rumor that Levi’s would give you a free pair of jeans for 100 Levi’s tabs. You had to protect your butt at all times or someone would would stick a pencil through the tab and rip it off. I lost mine at a chorus rehearsal when I was trapped on the risers and couldn’t defend it.:mad:
Regarding Levi’s labels, I always wondered why they advertise the size (length and waist size) right there on the label. Naturally this doesn’t occur on women’s Levi’s, but it does on men’s. Do men just not care? I’m assuming they don’t, because I see plenty of them around (including those in rather large sizes). I would think that large men wouldn’t be any more interested in having their waist size announced to the world than women would, but maybe I’m wrong.
Sorry for the hijack–just always been curious about this.
I don’t care. You can tell I’m fat by looking at me. If you’re interested enough in whether I’m a 44 inch waste fat or a 40 makes no difference to me but if you spend that much time trying to read my butt I may take it the wrong way and assume you’re interested.
Normally, we just don’t care. I can’t speak for overweight guys, but I imagine they realize that it’s already quite evident that they’re big, and that they’re wearing Levi’s, and someone seeing the numbers isn’t going to change that. It’s not like an onlooker’s going to specifically look for it, and then, seeing it, say to themselves, “Well! I thought for sure this was a 44-waist pair, but whaddya know it’s only 40. This man must not be quite as fat as I thought.” Another factor might be that the vast majority of younger men never wear tucked shirts with any kind of jeans, so where the label is, is irrelevant. Finally, the most important factor in the case of Levi’s may be tradition. Until the 1930s or so (IIRC), they had no belt loops at all; instead, there were suspender buttons of much the same styling and appearance of the closure at the top of the fly. Occasionally in very old movies you’ll see someone wearing Levi’s like that.
Notwithstanding all that, I do remember a Seinfeld episode in which Jerry had needed to go up a size in the waist. Since this troubled him, he somehow effaced the original number on the patch and wrote in his old size. Remember, though, it was a show about nothing, and in the very first scene ever between him and George Costanza, they discussed the comparative importance of the third and second shirt buttons.
I’ve been buying Lucky brand jeans for several years, and I notice that the leather patch is a lot easier to remove than the one on Levi’s. (Or at least, based on the Levi’s I owned years ago.) That’s not to say it will fall off in the wash, but it would be a lot easier to remove, if I wished to.
To elaborate on this, remember that Levi’s were the first of their kind. Other companies like Lee, which emulated the originals, would naturally tend to follow suit. Wrangler is an exception, since they put their patch on the back pocket.
For an amusing description of the famous Levi’s patch, search Google Books for Ruggles Of Red Gap, written in 1914. It’s believed to be the first description in literature of:
The speaker is Ruggles himself, a sort of family butler or valet, bemoaning the the attire of Cousin Egbert, who’s gone out West and more or less gone native. I demurred from mentioning this earlier, but on reconsideration I think it’s the actual answer to the OP.
(Keep in mind that ‘overalls’, specifically waist overalls, was the terminology used by Levi until about 1960. They didn’t start using the word ‘jeans’ until about 1960.)