Although the emergence of youth culture propelled the brand to become popular in the mid 1900s, by the mid ’80s, it was struggling, and sales started to decline. However, Levi’s enlisted the help of advertisers John Hegarty and Barbara Noakes, who created the famous 1985 launderette ad to appeal to the MTV crowd.
According to WGSN, the reasoning behind the ’50s-themed advert, in which a man strips off down to his boxers in order to wash his shrink-to-fit 501 jeans, was because the teenage demographic was obsessed with retro Americana. By the end of the ’90s, Levi’s hit a peak with sales at £6.2 billion thanks to its youth-orientated ad campaigns, including this one featuring a then-unknown Brad Pitt.
