Jeanswest managing director George Yeung is ignoring Karl Lagerfeld’s ultimate fashion rule by looking back to the good old days and greatest hits of his business to mark its 50th anniversary.
“There is nothing worse than bringing up the good old days,” Lagerfeld once said. “To me, that’s the ultimate acknowledgment of failure.” It’s a safe bet that the legendary Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld never set foot in a Jeanswest store, so Yeung has looked back searching for success.
Model Chloe Maxwell has gone from being the Jeanswest girl in the nineties to the Jeanswest woman today. Maxwell was able to move on from representing Jeanswest to becoming a familiar television presented in the 2000s. Here Maxwell attended an event for her modelling agency Chic in Sydney.
The shopping centre staple came closest to the zeitgeist in the nineties and noughties with model Chloe Maxwell, telling television viewers that “Jeanswest fits best,” so why not repeat the formula?
With her signature catchphrase updated to “Jeanswest still fits best,” Maxwell returns to front the denim brand, in a move the company hopes will bring Generation X shoppers with her.
“Looking back to where we have been led us down this path,” Yeung says. “We wanted someone who represented comfort and familiarity, which is what we want for our costumes.”
“The campaign speaks to our multi-generational shoppers who now have comfort at the front of mind.”
For Maxwell, the campaign is a step and strut back to when television advertisements and billboards, rather than social media followers, were the measure of modelling success.
Model stalwarts. Brooke Shields for Jordache; Cat McNeil for Ksubi; Candice Swanepoel for DL1961.
“One of the best memories I had was when the ad first came out,” Maxwell says in a Jeanswest release. “The response was over the top. I had people stopping me on the street asking for autographs. There were posters of me from the floor to the ceiling in the stores.”
“Jeanswest flew me to a bunch of store openings in different parts of Australia and people were lined up down the street to meet me. I just could never have fathomed all this fanfare from me being an idiot on an ad on TV.”
The nostalgic campaign signals an optimistic outlook for Jeanswest, founded in Perth by Alister Norwood with a shop in 1972. By 1987 the company moved across the country, opening 100 stores before being sold to international investors in 1994.
At the beginning of 2020 Jeanswest entered into voluntary liquidation, closing 37 of 146 Australian stores, before being rescued by its former Hong Kong owners. Now the company is ready to open more stores again.
“We have an outstanding retail footprint with 113 stores,” says Jeanswest marketing manager Helen Soldatos. “We are still a big retailer and will be opening two new stores in September. This campaign is an opportunity for us to build on the brand equity from Chloe’s first appearance as a denim destination.”
Other brands are joining Jeanswest by gambling on the selling power of familiar faces. Australian denim brand Ksubi recently launched a campaign with 2000s supermodel Cat McNeil, former Calvin Klein pin-up Brooke Shields appearing in Jordache’s spring 2022 campaign while former Victoria’s Secret angel Candice Swanepoel ditched her wings to pose for eco-conscious denim brand DL1961.
“We are seeing brands tapping into memories and the way we felt as teenagers when we first might have encountered models like Brooke Shields,” says fashion consultant Sarah Gale, founder of Wearing Your Worth.
“It’s also a shift away from twenty-something models, or younger, showing that women have beauty and wisdom at all ages. That’s a big marketplace.”
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