Indigo for Levi’s RED by Jurgen Bey

In 1999, Jurgen Bey brought denim into the shop window in two ways: as clothing and as a material for the display itself. Commissioned by Droog Design and Levi Strauss & Co., Indigo for Levi’s RED was a nearly three-metre-wide installation made from glass and denim.

The project coincided with the launch of Levi’s RED, an experimental line led by designer Rikke Korff. Her team revisited the classic five-pocket jean, angling the seams and reshaping the hems so the denim followed the body more closely. Bey’s installation took that same spirit of experimentation into the shop window.

Jurgen Bey bases his design on the fact that the originally colourless indigo plant reveals its special blue colour by a chemical reaction with water. Not immediately, but slowly the colour changes from yellowish to the deepest blue. His idea is to show the Levi’s RED Line behind a pulsating screen, shifting between transparent and indigo blue. This is the start of a process in which different kinds of possibilities are investigated.

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The installation entered the collection of Centraal Museum Utrecht in 2002. A decade later, the museum included it in Blue Jeans: 350 Years of Denim, which ran from 24 November 2012 to 10 March 2013.