Jean Label

Created for the front cover of the first Sportswear International magazine published in the US in 1980, Jeans Label is a unique work by Andy Warhol. Completed in the final years of the artist's career, it marks the fond personal relationship that existed between Warhol and the magazine's founder. The realised work combines bold segments of deep red, magenta and denim blue, branded with iconic jeans labels on canvas. The concept clearly resonates with Warhol's core preoccupations: beauty and brand. The artist had already explored the visual possibilities of mass market brands such as the Campbell's Soup can and immortalised the images of iconic Hollywood beauties such as Marilyn Monroe and Liz Taylor. In Jeans Label he spoke to and celebrated beauty and its commercial counterpart fashion, so dominant in 1980s New York.

Andy Warhol loved jeans, wearing them even on formal occasions with a tuxedo jacket; he aspired to their brands' cult status. In 1975, Warhol published his ruminations on love, sex, food, money, work, beauty and fame. In it, he discussed his attraction to the all-American jean: 'French bluejeans? No, American are the best. Levi Strauss. With the little copper buttons. Studded for evening wear...This talk of bluejeans [is] making me very jealous. Of Levi and Strauss. I wish I could invent something like bluejeans. Something to be remembered for. Something mass...I want to die with my bluejeans on' (Warhol quoted in The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again) New York 1975, p. 13).