The coolest jeans in toon
By Liz Hands, The Journal
Fashion in the 80s was all about ra-ra skirts, shoulder pads, batwing jumpers, leg warmers, pixie boots and - in the North-East - Geordie Jeans.
At a time when job losses were rife in the region's rag trade, the label was the success story of the decade.
Founded in 1978 at the Rekendyke factory in South Shields Industrial estate by entrepreneur Derek Robson, in its heyday there were 10 Geordie Jeans shops across the North-East.
The company started the first cut-price jeans war - boasting the cheapest denims in the country back in 1980 at £6.99 a pair.
It is that ruthless competition which has ironically led to the end of the Geordie Jeans empire, with the closure of the last shop in the chain in South Shields.
Derek blamed supermarkets like Asda and Tesco for selling jeans at £4 a pair, exorbitant rents and high taxes for the shut down.
But, even though the brand is no more, everyone who was a pupil of the 1980s will probably have some memories of wearing Geordie Jeans.
Hilary McGloughlin, who now works as a senior lecturer in fashion design and marketing at Northumbria University, was one of the label's designers in the early 80s.
"Everyone was wearing them at the time," she says. "We couldn't make them fast enough. We did this GJ logo on the back pockets, which was my handwriting.
"For me, it was fantastic to go out and see so many people wearing my designs. But it was really weird to see my handwriting walking down Northumberland Street on someone's bottom."
Hilary was working at Geordie Jeans at the height of the brand's popularity.
"When I started in 1981 or 1982, there was the South Shields shop and the Grainger Street shop in Newcastle had just opened," she recalls. "It was manic. I remember people queuing down the street and being let in six at a time so it didn't become too crowded.
"It was all about getting a fantastic cut for the jeans. We did cuts for everyone right from the pot-bellied builder for whom we used to cut the denim low down at the front so their belly could hang over, to the Olivia Newton-John look, which was the absolute must at the time.
"That's why stretch denim was brought in. Everyone wanted their jeans as skin-tight as possible and we put different embroidery on the back pockets for each different style.
"Price was the reason they were so popular. It was the first time fashionable jeans had been affordable for everyone. It wasn't because they were manufactured cheaply and it wasn't because it was cheap denim. We were sourcing our denim from exactly the same place Levis were getting theirs. The quality was there.
"We were turning out hundreds of thousands of pairs. It was good quality being made in a local factory by local girls who were proud of the name.
"I remember having washing instructions which were normal on one side and on the other they'd be written in Geordie by the same people who do the Larn Yarsel Geordie books. We'd also have Christmas cards saying something like `Ha' yarsel a canny Christmas.'
"That was a really brave move at the time, to do something fairly unusual because Derek Robson was so proud of the origins of his product.
"And we didn't need any major advertising campaign. We never had the glossy kind of pictures with models in Geordie Jeans. We didn't need it. It was all word of mouth."
The popularity of Geordie Jeans was particularly remarkable when you consider how the firm started.
"Derek came up with the idea with his two brothers," explains Hilary. "He wondered why jeans had to be so expensive. He went into his bank and got a loan for one roll of denim, got a local woman to make that up, then went back into the bank with the money and asked for another loan so he could buy two rolls.
"It all started from a terraced house in South Shields. He used to have the cutting tables upstairs and the machines downstairs, until the equipment got too heavy and the ceiling fell in. Then he had to move to proper factory premises."
The Geordie Jeans factory eventually closed in 1999, with the loss of 23 machinists' jobs, and the number of shops was gradually reduced until the last shop in South Shields shut its doors last month.
After announcing the closure, Derek said: "My decision was that I can't go on forever losing money.
"We already saw the demise of the coal mines and the shipyards. Now machinists who make clothes are forced out of jobs because it is cheaper to make clothes abroad.
"Making people who have worked for you for more than 20 years redundant is not a nice thing to do. I would just like to thank all the people who have shopped with us and worked with us throughout the years."
Hilary adds: "It's very sad for the area for lots of reasons. Yes, I'm sad myself because it was part of my working life, but it's also sad now for all of us working to train potential designers at Northumbria University and it's a tragedy for everyone who has lost their jobs."
Now, Geordie Jeans has been consigned, along with other 80s trends, to fashion history.
