Pepe Jeans

The date is 1973 and a crowd of raucous kids are jostling for position around an unassuming market-stall sheltering from the icy February drizzle under a railway bridge in the heart of Portobello Market, London. The buzz is palpable. Trecking by Tube, bus and bike from the far corners of London this motley crue has converged on the capital’s hippest clothing market in a bid to lay their hands on an elusive pair of the jeans that has had London’s most discerning fashion devotees swapping notes. It was there in 1973, under that bridge in Notting Hill, that Pepe Jeans was born.