Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 29, 1990 TAG: 9007270045
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: WOODY HOCHSWENDER
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
This portentous development parallels a revival of '60s styles of all kinds, providing proof of the cyclical nature of fashion and questionable taste.
"No one wants to believe it, because the look, the way we remember it, was so hideous," said Marshall Bank, a licensing agent who helped arrange the revival of the Landlubber label. "If you put on a pair," he added, referring to the original style, "you may want to kill it."
But there's no need to get violent. Aging rock stars and middle-aged flower children are not the market for this revival. Besides, most people from that era now wear a 38 waist (on a good day). The new Landlubber jeans are meant for a generation that has never worn bell bottoms, let alone seen Jimi Hendrix play the national anthem with his teeth.
Young rock stars like the Stone Roses, Taylor Dayne, and Lenny Kravitz have set things in motion by wearing bell bottoms on MTV. The actress Lisa Bonet wore a pair of striped bell bottoms on "The Cosby Show" last season.
"There are kids taking their parents' bell bottoms and wearing them," Bank said. "That's the only place they can get them."
At its peak in the mid-1970s, Landlubber had retail sales of about $100 million. Since 1979, however, no Landlubber products have been made in this country, although some have been manufactured overseas.
Throughout the 1980s, business was dormant, as Landlubber and other manufacturers sang the "Bell-Bottom Blues." (Legend has it that Eric Clapton composed that song after being unable to find a pair of Landlubber jeans in his size at a Florida clothing store.) America had become a Levi's 501 (straight leg) and Guess (modified peg leg) kind of place.
The new Landlubbers are manufactured by Old Boy Network in Greensboro, N.C., under a license agreement from Hoffman Apparel, which owns the rights to the Landlubber name.
Landlubbers, which were originally distributed to Army-Navy retail stores in unisex sizes, have been redesigned. They are no longer as low-rise and as hip-hugging. They are also not as wide at the bottom or the knee; none of that "elephant bell" look that represented the last evolution of the bell bottom in the late 1970s. Some styles even have pleated fronts.
Landlubbers' modified bell bottoms for the '90s will be sold at Macy's, Canal Jeans, Trash & Vaudeville and Bloomingdale's (which also had a bell-bottom bodysuit by Tapemeasure in its Lexington Avenue windows recently). The jeans also will be available at Belk stores in Raleigh, N.C., this fall, and may be sold at other Belk-owned stores in Virginia and the Carolinas, said Caren Weiss of Landlubber.
The original Landlubbers cost $7 to $10 in 1964. Today, at about $42, they are just another one of those things you never should have thrown out.
Staff writer Tracie Fellers contributed information to this story.
by CNB