Designers are normalizing denim in haute couture collections. Balenciaga included blue and gray jeans and a jacket in its F/W 23-24 collection and the fabric is a staple of RDVK Ronald van der Kemp’s couture collections.
The vintage Levi’s 501 XX Big E jeans served as the canvas for gilded embroidery in Valentino Haute Couture’s collection. The jean bearing a red tab with a capitalized “E,” reveals that the jeans were produced before 1971. It also means that jeans were manufactured in the United States before Levi’s.
Valentino creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli set out to challenge the “perceived complexity of Haute Couture” by highlighting “pure simplicity” and designs that “reflect contemporary sensibilities,” according to the show notes.
The vintage jeans fetch a high price. Valentino and Levi’s are a lethal combination. In 2021, Piccioli tapped Levi’s to make 517 units of Levi’s Valentino Vintage 517 jeans and 5,107 units of a re-edition of the 517. The unisex jeans were finished with co-branded patches and interiors. The re-issued jeans retailed for $990.
Levi’s Vintage jeans produced before 2002 in the US get haute couture treatment
