Jeans with a dash of tonic

Rough and rugged or rhinestone-studded, that great American classic, cowboy's blue jeans, has moved out of Haight-Ashbury and into the boîte this spring. In a year when pants are the fashion that challenges the miniskirt for a place on the hip, the hippest pants of all are the model that made Levi's a name that almost rivals that of Coke as an American product known around the world.

In response to the fad, Levi Strauss has launched a line called Levi's for Gals, for the first time in its 119 years making its famous jacket and fly-front pants in women's sizes. Aziyadé Venus wears them (left) with the added glitter of rhinestone buttons and Giorgio Sant'Angelo's silver mesh top and belt to shine at McGregor's Garage, a Greenwich Village restaurant decorated with oilcans and gas-station signs. Host Paul McGregor greets Aziyadé in his nightly uniform—well-faded Levi's.

The low-slung, hip-hugging Levi's cut has been copied by other designers, in every kind of fabric. Lilly Pulitzer launched a line of men's Pulitzer Jeans last year in bright hand-screened floral prints and now finds the girls are raiding her menswear shops to buy them. And Giorgio Sant'Angelo, the avant-garde Italian designer (SI, Jan. 13), has cut jeans pants and jackets line for line in purple satin (above) for more form-fitting shine by night.

TWO PHOTOS

STEPHEN GREEN-ARMYTAGE