Calvin Klein helped popularize high-priced designer jeans through the brand’s influential 1970s campaigns.
Calvin Klein’s fashion company introduced designer denim as a major part of its image during the 1970s. The jeans were marketed not merely as durable workwear or casual clothing, but as fashion products carrying a designer name and premium positioning.
The campaigns helped bring denim into the broader designer-fashion marketplace. This development differed from the earlier history of jeans, which centered on workers, cowboys, teenagers, and mass-market brands such as Levi’s, Lee, and Wrangler.
People sometimes associate Calvin Klein’s denim breakthrough mainly with the famous 1980 Brooke Shields advertising campaign. That campaign was highly influential, but the brand’s designer-jeans expansion began during the preceding decade.