How Levi’s Remade Bob Dylan’s Iconic Jeans For Its New Capsule Collection

Even the most casual Bob Dylan fan can likely call up his signature look: jeans, boots, a suede or leather jacket, that mop of hair. What’s less known, however, is how carefully curated that “messy” aesthetic actually is — a fact that surprises even the most in-the-know fashion designers.

“He spent so long trying to create that haphazard look,” says Levi’s Vintage Clothing design director Paul O’Neill, who worked hand-in-glove with costume designer Arianne Phillips on many of the looks in A Complete Unknown, a new biopic about the singer-songwriter starring Timothée Chalamet. “He spent hours in front of the mirror.”

I’m chatting with O’Neill and Phillips — who also worked together on a three-piece Levi’s Vintage Clothing collection that pays homage to some of Dylan’s most memorable looks — about the artist and the new film, out Christmas Day, over coffee at Café Chelsea at the Chelsea Hotel. It’s a fitting setting for a discussion about the music icon, who lived at the New York City landmark shortly after he arrived in the city in the early 1960s and quickly embedded himself in the Greenwich Village folk scene.

“He spent so long trying to create that haphazard look.”

The movie, based on the 2015 book Dylan Goes Electric! by Elijah Wald, traces Dylan’s early days of fame, culminating in his controversial 1965 performance at the Newport Folk Festival using (gasp!) electric instruments. Chalamet’s already earned critical praise — and a Golden Globe nod — for the role, having immersed himself in Dylan’s life and spending five years learning how to play guitar and harmonica. Unlike many biopics, however, it’s not a trajectory of the artist’s entire life.

“It was really apparent to me that this is such a specific window of time. It’s four years,” Phillips says. “You don’t see technology changing. You don’t see architecture, automobiles changing. But what you see changing is Bob and some of the people around him.”

Costumes, then, became a crucial vehicle for telling the story of a young man finding his voice, his artistry, and the artist he wants to become. Directed by James Mangold, the movie was meant to begin shooting in the summer of 2020 but, like everything else that year, got put on pause. Production stalled again in 2023 due to the SAG-AFTRA strike, but both setbacks afforded the Oscar-nominated Phillips, who’d previously collaborated with Mangold on films including the 2005 biopic Walk the Line, the time to do extensive design research. Pretty quickly, a picture of Dylan’s signature style — denim and boots — began to emerge.

“It’s four years. You don’t see technology changing. You don’t see architecture, automobiles changing. But what you see changing is Bob and some of the people around him.”

“In the beginning he’s wearing dungarees, like worker pants,” says Phillips. “Then you see him in 1963, which is really encapsulated on The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan album cover, wearing what I was pretty sure was a 1963 version, or earlier, of the [Levi’s 501]. But I wasn’t sure.”

That’s when Phillips called up Levi’s, which had helped her source vintage denim for 2019’s Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood, and they quickly connected her with O’Neill. He’d designed Levi’s Vintage Clothing “Folk City” collection in 2019 and had a trove of information at his fingertips.

“I just pulled out all my old research documents and shared them with Arianne,” says O’Neill.

“I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, this is really the era of our movie,’” adds Phillips. “What was great about that is that I already, by that time, had spent years looking at photos, and I had hundreds, almost thousands of photos on my desktop and in digital drives and stuff. And what Paul pointed out to me was about learning about Suze Rotolo, Dylan’s girlfriend who’s on the cover of Freewheelin’.”

While researching his 2019 collection, O’Neill had read Rotolo’s memoir, in which she recalled sewing an inverted U panel into the bottom of Dylan’s jeans so he could wear them over his boots — years before Levi’s introduced boot-cut jeans. “I can remember me and my assistant at the time going, ‘Oh, my God, we have to find that photo,’” says O’Neill.

Phillips and O’Neill used that detail to recreate a pair of 501s with the insert for the film, as well as for the collection, available for purchase Friday, Dec. 20, exclusively on levi.com. The other two pieces include a recreation of a leather “D” buckle belt of Dylan’s and a two-pocket suede trucker jacket that Dylan wore in the early 1960s.

“We were all excited that we were using the jeans with the inserted panel,” says O’Neill. “Arianne suggested the belt, which I thought was great to be able to include — because it really then made it Bob’s jeans, right?”

“We created three different suede jackets in the film — one of which was very similar to what Paul had recreated for his 2019 collection,” adds Phillips. “And it’s very funny because even Timmy and Jim [Mangold] didn’t know the difference sometimes on set. Like, ‘Get the brown jacket.’ And I’m like, ‘Well, which one?’”

Dylan’s look, like his music, would evolve over the years because he never wanted to be defined by one fashion or musical style. By the mid-’60s, he started wearing Levi’s Super Slims, nearly impossible to find today, which O’Neill helped Phillips identify and recreate for the film. Nevertheless, the singer-songwriter’s basic uniform has some consistency.

“He still wears Levi’s; he still wears boots, a suede or leather jacket,” says Phillips. “We really, I think, find things in our early 20s that really express our personal style, and they stick with us through life and time, and I think that’s a beautiful idea with denim.”