Sweet Purple Fat Courderoy Bellbottoms

The market for young men's clothing grew to include many styles in 1969. Men's fashion choices exploded in the late sixties and early seventies. There were hits and misses in the Beall's department store buyers expert eye. Some of the most outlandish fashion outcasts ended up in the barganin bin. Mama worked at Beall's and I got a chance to dress like Hugh Hefner.

I had plaids and stripes in a variety of colors. They were all bell-bottoms and were made of plastic. I wore polyester blends. The biggest problem I had is that I did not have a pair of bell bottom denim Levi's. I was stuck with Hugh Hefner and I wanted to be The Eagles or The Grateful Dead.

The reason that I got cast off clothes is that the marketing and logistics exploded in the late 60's and early 70's because of the new ability to monitor factory input and output and adjust the mix of product to the mix of available demand from customers and supply from vendors. As plush pink deep courderoy bell bottom's are tracked against green and brown versions, the green and brown have emerged from the demand in the market as clear winners. Pink is a clear loser and quickly gets pulled - the energy required for the manufacture and distribuiton of this version is spend elsewhere.

I remember clearly several pairs of brushed courderoy pants in several interesting shades of purple and pink or dusty rose. I like them best because they were Levi's cut in the same pattern as the regular blue jean style. These were my go-to pants. Sweet. Loud. Proud pants.

The extent to which my butt was in weird Levi's instead of cool Levi's was that Levi's became a major fashion institution and explored the blue jean design space for fit returns. As Levi's and other clothing brands diffused a random population of colors and patterns, the clothes filled fashion niches while at the same time producing odd combinations that no one wanted except Mama as she looked over the deeply discounted final sales clearance (to which she added her store discount). I was dressed in the ugliest of the new fashions and I was happy about it. My other choice was homemade clothes or the dreaded Gulf Mart shirts and pants that hung wrong and were made of 100% polyester. Beall's and Levi's made life bearable in Jr. High because of an emerging science of logistics and market research. I was clothed by Rough Beast.