A workhorse gone hip

Sometimes, the journey from workwear and dad jeans to fashion icon is surprisingly short. Wrangler has gone through several different stages and changed names a few times, without ever falling off the horse.

WORDS BY NATHALIE WOLF | PHOTOS BY WRANGLER

The year is 1897. Brothers C.C. and Homer Hudson leave their home at Spring Hill Farm in Williamson County, Tennessee, to try to make it in the textile capital of Greensboro, North Carolina. They soon find work sewing buttons onto overalls at a local clothing manufacturer. When the factory shuts its doors in 1904, the brothers decide to join forces with a few of the other workers to start their own brand. Hudson Overalls is born, and the fuse of what will one day become Wrangler is lit. They soon realize that railroad workers need durable clothing and develop tough workwear in a small loft above the Coe Brothers Grocery store on South Elm Street. Their clothes become popular, and business is booming. In 1919, they build their own factory and change their name to Blue Bell Corporations. In 1936, they join with Globe Superior Corporation to become the largest workwear manufacturer of the time.

From Workwear To Fashion Icon

At this time, there was no youth culture, and only laborers walked around in jeans or overalls. But Blue Bell was setting its sights on an overlooked group of potential customers: the cowboys. It’s unclear if they already saw the potential value of their brand, but they begin to market themselves to this population, even using them in their advertisements.

In 1946, Blue Bell starts to develop jeans for cowboys, and they announce a competition for the factory’s workers to find a new name for the jeans. The winner is: Wrangler — for the working cowboy.

In 1947, Wrangler officially becomes a denim brand, with the sole ambition to create the world’s best five-pocket jeans for cowboys and consumers. They hire “tailor to the stars”, Rodeo Ben. Rodeo Ben — whose real name was Bernard Lichtenstein — was a Polish tailor from the town of Łódź. He worked closely with real cowboys to develop a pair of jeans suitable for the rodeo. This resulted in the now-classic Wrangler 11MW model; 11 means 11 oz for fabric thickness and MW indicating Men’s Wear. The jeans had details suited for the rodeo, like flat rivets that wouldn’t scratch the saddle and seven belt loops instead of five to ensure that the jeans stayed in place.

I call Emilia Hallström at Wrangler Scandinavia. She tells me that Wrangler’s main clientele remains older in both the U.S. and Europe but that the younger generations are moving in. The jean collections adapt to customers in the different markets. New fits are being designed for younger, Gen Z customers, and new channels are being used to reach them.

“Last year, we turned 75, and we celebrated this by partnering with Lollapalooza in Berlin. We had a huge Wrangler area and invited important influencers and Wrangler ambassadors from all over Europe,” says Emilia.

Wrangler’s European and American sites also show how they adapt to different markets. The American menu for “Cowboy” is replaced in Europe by an “Outdoor” option.

Denim Doctor

At this point, I have to know more. I find Viktor Fredbäck, a real denim head, jeans expert and collector, with about 400 pairs to his name. Over the phone, he tells me about his addiction.

“I’ve been passionate about jeans since college. My roommate at the time worked with jeans, and his brother was a designer at Lee. Our apartment was full of magazines about denim and jeans,” Viktor tells me.

Wrangler was very popular with celebrities back in the day. Here's Steve McQueen in a lovely denim western shirt.

He quickly realized that the magazines were far more enticing than his coursework, and soon, he had joined the blue side.

“I started small, picking up items on eBay, but my collection grew quickly. In the first five years it was mainly the big brands: Lee, Wrangler, and Levi’s. Today I own all of their models and have set my sights on finding older, unknown denim brands.”

The best hunting grounds for this turns out to be old mines in the U.S. Viktor digs out jeans that have been preserved thanks to the climate of the mines.

“It’s dangerous. The mines haven’t been open in many years, and the risk of cave-ins is constant,” he says, “but since this is my passion, I think it’s worth the risk.”

“I don’t just collect the jeans. It’s also about their history and background. You could stay I collect jean stories,” Viktor continues.

His denim desires have been muted lately. He published his book True fit: a collected history of denim and has even been featured in a movie, mining for old jeans models in America, and it all took its toll. The pandemic, however, brought a period of rest from books, movies, and traveling around to lecture about jeans, and now his passion is coming back.

He has also chosen not to work professionally with denim for this exact reason. While his love for jeans has sometimes straddled the gray zone between work and play, he has always tried to keep it more as a hobby to prevent himself from growing tired of it.

When I ask him about his relationship to Wrangler, Viktor reveals that while his interest in the iconic brand used to be bigger, he is very pleased to own a pair of Wrangler’s first model 11MW from 1947.

“They used the same back-pocket stitch as Levi’s then. It was very common until Levi’s patented the pattern.That’s when they decided to design the stitch as a ‘W’ on the back pockets. Wrangler is on my top ten list of denim brands; they’ve been very important throughout the history of jeans.”

For his own outfits, Viktor mostly wears reproductions of the old models he’s found in the mines. He tells me that in collaboration with a factory in Japan, TBC Jeans & Co., he develops jeans that look more like older models, straighter and airier. The fabric was thinner then and less durable, so the miners often wore two pairs of jeans over each other to protect them from damage and the humid environment. His own brand, Viktors Voice, is based on a pair of jeans from a small brand called Olympic Brand.

“I have a pair of rodeo clown pants by Wrangler with the Wrangler name embroidered all over the pants. I asked the seller if they knew anything about the jeans, and as luck would have it, they had belonged to a relative, Frank Curry. I was curious, so I googled him. It turns out that Frank was a well-known rodeo clown in the 1960s. He was also one of the models for the Ronald McDonald character. That whole history makes this pair very special to me.”

Ambassadors And Cool Cats

Jim Shoulders, a legend in the rodeo world, was the first Wrangler jeans model. He became the face of the brand and a partner in ad campaigns until his death in 2007. Shoulders was a city kid from Tulsa, Oklahoma, who participated in his first rodeo at age 14. He had a natural talent for the sport and by the time he was 21 years old he had won his first championship. After that, he was nearly invincible and was crowned champion 16 times in the course of his career.

In 1962, Wrangler came to Europe. The first factory opened in Belgium. Throughout the ‘60s and ‘70s, the brand flourished, popular with both Hollywood celebrities and young people. Bell-bottomed Wrangler jeans were seen on the stars and fashion-forward kids everywhere in the 1970s, but they also appeared in Western films and on cool actors like Paul Newman and Robert Redford.

A colorful sports collection was developed in partnership with German artist Peter Max. The company is now more productive than ever, producing more and more models. They also became the first and only denim brand to be officially approved by the Pro Rodeo Cowboy Association of America. That’s a big deal.

After a brief dip in the 1980s, the brand has made a real comeback. In 1996, a pair of Wrangler jeans dressed one out of four men in the U.S. To this day, there’s no question what brand you are wearing on the rodeo circuit, and it’s totally fine to iron creases into your jeans. Thanks to an upswing in Americana popularity, Wranglers are totally right for the moment, and you can still buy a pair of 11MWs today, just as in 1947.