Are Your Jeans Red or Blue? Shopping America's Partisan Divide
Levi Strauss and Wrangler both got their start as the go-to jeans for cowboys, railroad workers and others who pioneered the American West. Today, they are on opposite sides of a political divide that is affecting not only how people vote but what they buy. Consumer research data show Democrats have become more likely to wear Levi’s than their Republican counterparts. The opposite is true with Wrangler, which is now far more popular with Republicans.
There is no simple explanation behind those consumer moves. Some of it is due to social and political stances companies are taking, such as Levi’s embrace of gun control. Some is tied to larger geographic shifts in the political parties themselves, as rural counties become more Republican and urban areas lean more Democratic. Wrangler is popular in the cowboy counties of the West and Midwest while San Francisco-based Levi’s resonates more with city dwellers.
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None of this has escaped big-name brands and store chains, which are trying to grow or hold on to market share by showing they support—or oppose—the same causes as their customers. Since the 2016 election, companies have started to wade deeper into issues they would have recoiled from a decade ago, such as gun control, immigration and gay rights, in part to appeal to younger, socially conscious consumers. At the same time, the country is becoming more polarized along political lines, which is having an effect on brands that choose to stay out of the political fray.
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Levi’s waded into the gun debate in 2016, after a customer shot himself in the foot while trying on a pair of jeans at an Atlanta store. That prompted Chief Executive Chip Bergh to write an open letter to shoppers asking them not to bring firearms into its stores. In 2018, it began funneling $1 million in Levi’s grants to nonprofits and activists working to end gun violence. In September, Mr. Bergh, 62, helped draft a letter that was signed by more than 200 CEOs asking members of the Senate to pass gun-control laws.
Levi’s was a vocal opponent in 2017 of President Trump’s travel ban that blocked citizens of several Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S. It signed amicus briefs opposing the ban as it went through the courts. “It felt un-American,” Mr. Bergh said of the ban, particularly since Levi’s was founded by an immigrant. Mr. Bergh said the company isn’t targeting Republicans or Democrats, but rather taking a moral stand on issues where it believes it will be on the right side of history, as it was when it opened a desegregated factory in Virginia in 1960, four years before the Civil Rights Act was passed... Wrangler has donated money for breast cancer research, provided aid to military veterans and is trying to make its manufacturing process less harmful to the environment. But its marketing has stayed focused on playing up its cowboy heritage—which tends to mean more rural and often more Republican. It launched a new campaign in September that compares bull riding to other adrenaline-inducing activities such as riding a motorcycle.
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https://www.wsj.com/articles/are-your-jeans-red-or-blue-shopping-americas-partisan-divide-11574185777 (paid subscription)
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Although I have never seen ripped khakis..... that’s like a wool jacket I’ve been trying to find. I gained some weight and it’s enough to get a, hate to say it, a larger size. So trying on all the “new” pea coats available and they all feel like crap. None of them are even above the 50% wool range in fabric. I then decided to go to our “high end” resale shops to find what I was looking for, at least 70 to 100 % wool pea coat. And yahoo, found a London Fog tan pea coat with 70% wool fabric content at the first shop I went too.....$31.00, and with a cleaning of 17.00, found exactly what I was looking for. Then I got a Lands End catalog with a 122.00 pea coat with 50 % wool in the mail and immediately threw the catalog away because I have my 70% wool pea coat I always wanted.
Here’s the one I DIDN’T BUY..... https://www.landsend.com/shop/womens-regular-pea-coat-coats-jackets-outerwear/S-xfi-y8w-xez-y5c-xhi-yp3-xec
