Quality never goes out of style.
(Levi Strauss & Co.'s long-standing official slogan)
When I think of my young years, complete high school days, I remember how difficult that period of life was for us.
Those years of my schooling were marked by the sanctions of FR Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro).
Due to involvement in the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the UN Security Council adopted a resolution in May 1992 that imposed full sanctions on my country:
Complete ban on trade and export;
Freezing of finances abroad;
Interruption of air traffic;
Prohibition of participation in cultural and sports events...
In April 1993, the sanctions were further strengthened, introducing a complete blockade of river and sea traffic, which led to hyperinflation that peaked in late 1993 and early 1994.
Only in mid-1994, the sanctions were partially eased.
I regret when I think about the impossibility of movement for those three years, but how can I regret that I missed school excursions, when my peers in the former republics lived in war zones...
But how could I go on an excursion, when due to those sanctions, the state's economy collapsed and there was an unprecedented hyperinflation, so my parents had a hard time providing food for us to feed ourselves, and not to travel...
And so for 25 months.
At the beginning of the sanctions, inflation followed the shortage of wartime products, and it had its worst scenario at the end of 1993 and the beginning of 1994.
In January 1994, an infamous record was set, the monthly inflation rate was an incredible 313,563,558% (over 313 million percent).
With such inflation, the prices of products on the shelves (those that were available for purchase at all) doubled every 17 hours.
At the end of January, as part of the monetary reconstruction program, a new dinar was introduced, which was pegged 1:1 to the German mark (DM). It was only the first step in stabilizing the still difficult economic situation in the country due to the still valid sanctions...
Summer of 1994.
I am a young man of 18 years old, in full strength and eager for everything. I spend the summer in agriculture, helping my uncle to sell his products at the market, and then, for the first time in almost three years, I come into possession of my pocket money.
DM by DM, my wallet gets thicker and I get the opportunity to buy myself some nice piece of clothing.
I meet a team at the market that smuggles original Levi's jeans and sells them there for only 100 DM (Amount that was equal to 20 monthly salaries of my parents in 1993), I buy my first Levi's Black Blue 524 jeans.
In addition to being a beautiful color, they fit me perfectly and I loved wearing them. I was proud to buy them because at that time it was still not easy to get them, I wrote, the sanctions were still going on and they could not be found in the regular offer in clothing stores.
If I got them dirty by wearing them, I would put them in the washing machine in the evening, dry them on the radiator at night, iron them in the morning and wear them right away that day. And so for months. Wherever I went, my jeans went too 🙂
And in that period, 18 years old, with the remaining pocket money earned over the summer, I could afford to go out with friends, go to a club or a disco, I could afford to pay a girl I liked for a drink or a dinner...
I wore those jeans until they started to rip. They ended up on the sewing machine several times, and I stopped wearing them when the thread they were patched with scratched me so much that they were no longer comfortable to wear, or maybe when I gained a few kilos and couldn't get into them anymore 🤔
Um... It's probably the latter.
In the years that followed, when the situation in the country improved a little (because actually since 1991, it has never been great), my economic situation also improved a little.
I worked jobs that provided me with enough money that I could live a more normal life, but never wastefully... But I was still able to buy myself a few pairs of jeans, which I didn't have to dry overnight 🙂
And Levi's...
I had a few more Levi's jeans after that 1994 Black blue model, but I never found a color and style that fit me as well as the 1994. Maybe because I never tried to buy them overseas, where did my 524 come from...?
When I saw one of the topics galenkp came up with this weekend:
What material item that you no longer have in your life has brought you some amazing memories that endured?
I remembered the distant year 1994 and those jeans I got at the moment when the life situation became a little less black.
I have never forgotten this period of my life, the torment of my parents, poverty and great misery
In the following years, as well as today, in my country, which is now without Montenegro, the situation is not great, we have protests, a corrupt and thieving government, but we are in a slightly better economic situation than those years at the end of the millennium.
And not to forget that period of my life, the situation in the whole world does not allow me. Wars, poverty, refugees, suffering...
So it often occurs to me: when will the young men and women in the countries where wars and unrest are raging today, in all the poor countries of the world, have the opportunity to buy themselves a pair of Levi's jeans, like me?
Only one pair of jeans in my life, they marked a moment, a turning point from total ruin and poverty to a slightly better time...
In those one year, when I wore them every day, I experienced some of the situations that I could only boast about in those young, frivolous years.
Now at this age, and especially today, when I am spending the last day of the first half of a century of my life, I can only smile at those memories.
Considering that tomorrow is the jubilee day for me, I believe that the whole weekend and the next few days of the working week will be very exciting and interesting for me, which I wish for you too.
Enjoy the upcoming weekend.