Wranglers Stretched Covers Campaign in 1982

In the early 1980s Wranglers produced stretched denim, aimed specifically at women as a fashion jean. Silhouettes, colours and details became more important aspects of design. Wrangler created stretch denim by adding 10% Lycra into the denim to make stretch jeans especially for women, and to give the jean more movement. Women could then go down a size, pull them on and the jeans would stretch to give a tight fit.

“The original Wrangler jeans patch was fairly large and looked almost plastic, which was part of its charm. In an early example of conscious marketing to women, the patch now reduced in size and looked like real leather. Stretch denim.” (ibid).


Denim fabric made with a percentage of elastan fibre in the weft, giving it a body-fitting stretch quality (-+Lycra). The first mill to produce this special denim in Europe was Legler, in the late 1970s, though initially without great success. One of the earliest stretch jeans lines was produced in Hong Kong by Peter Golding, using Japanese stretch denim. In 1980 Levi's launched in the UK the first complete women’s wear program of stretch jeans with the help of Lauffenmiihle's Elastenim. This initiative met with very good response in Great Britain and other brands soon followed suit. Marks & Spencer (UK) was the next to bring stretch denim to the consumer, this time using a Legler range. And the following years in Europe saw a boom in the stretch phenomenon, notably with France's Buffalo and, around 1983/1984, Germany's Mustang (http://www.alrashidmall.com/clothing4.htm)

“The £5 million poster campaign for stretch denim was aimed specifically at women. It was displayed in shops but also as a forty-eight sheet poster campaign. The posters, which measured 20 feet by 40 feet, were again produced by Maiden and the agency Collett Dickenson Pearce. The proof, which measures 15 inches by 30 inches, can be seen in the Northampton poster collection and serves as a miniature version of the original poster.

The entire set was made of denim; the rubber plant and even the telephone were covered in stretch denim. The campaign lasted for three months, with a month for each poster, and the posters appeared on eighteen thousand poster sites across the UK. As part of the same campaign, a second poster was produced featuring a surreal image which illustrates a prism breaking into images of different products.” (ibid)

The posters have a matt finish to them and were displayed in shops at the point of sale. Again, the poster in the collection is the proof that was provided as art work to the printers. The phone box poster is in yellow and blue, the Wrangler colours. It was designed by a student from West Nottinghamshire College in open competition, and part of the prize was to see a poster produced. The British telephone box is a part of street culture, loved, respected and classless, like denim.