Levi’s Gets Wild With a 1950s Teenage B-Movie-Inspired Collection: ‘The Shocking Truth’
LVC celebrates the cheap thrills of these low-budget films that have become cult classics of Hollywood cinema
There was nothing quite like the angst and rebellion of the American teenager during the 1950s and ‘60s. Or at least that’s what Hollywood and the many of the B-movies of the era would have you believe: savage punks on a weekend violence binge; boys brawling over a teenage bad girl; death at a chickie run.
While these movies largely failed to deliver on the hype they promised, the trailers and advertising made for entertaining viewing. And they also serve as inspiration for the new Levi’s Vintage Clothing Fall/Winter 2021 collection.
Called ‘The Shocking Truth,’ this new season takes all of the vivid colour and overtly stylized imagery from those ‘50s and ‘60s teenage B-movie posters and pours them into a collection of jeans, jackets, pants, and tops modelled after looks from the era. Letter jackets and satin bombers. Camp collar shirts and geometric print sweaters. And of course, denim. Plenty of denim.
‘The concept this season is all about teenage exploitation movies happening in Hollywood during the ’50s and ‘60s, and how they were selling something that didn’t exist. They were advertised as crazy, wild movies, but then they weren’t at all what they were hyped to be,’ says Paul O’Neill, Design Director for Levi’s Vintage Clothing at Levi’s Strauss & Co.
‘The posters were amazing, but the movies were not very exciting. So we took inspiration from the posters—the vivid images, the bright colours and graphics—and created a collection as if Levi’s had produced the wardrobe. Everything is exaggerated and hyper-real, as if the movie posters had come to life.”
Shop the new LVC ‘The Shocking Truth’ collection here.
