LEVI’S® SECOND HAND ON THE ROAD WITH ZOSIA MAMET & EVAN JONIGKEIT
Style /
February 2022
A few years ago, Zosia Mamet and Evan Jonigkeit set out on a cross-country road trip as a belated honeymoon vacation. They loved the experience so much that they wanted to do it again. So when Evan booked a movie in Portland and Zosia had to be in L.A. to shoot her series The Flight Attendant, they figured, why not pack the camper back up for a second round? Setting out from their home in Upstate New York and packing their favorite pieces of Levi’s® vintage, Zosia and Evan made the journey through Chicago, Laramie, Moab, and ultimately L.A. as they explored the hidden corners of America for the ultimate Levi’s® SecondHand road adventure.
WHAT MADE YOU WANT TO TAKE ANOTHER ROAD TRIP, AND THEN ALSO GET LEVI’S® SECONDHAND INVOLVED?
ZOSIA: We love creating and we love new challenges, especially if we're not partaking in our day job at the time. We were going to film the trip in some way, shape, or form anyways, and we've both just been such huge fans of Levi's® for so long. We just love the brand and everything it stands for. So this just seemed like a no-brainer. Levi's®, I feel, so represents Americana, and the open road, and adventure, and embracing who you are. And life on the road is interesting. It is weirdly open, and also very small at the same time, which is one of the things we love so much about it. You can be a homebody, while also being on the most epic adventure of your life.
EVAN: Zosia was scheduled to go back to shoot season two of The Flight Attendant out in Los Angeles, and we were living in New York, and I was scheduled to go do a film in Portland. And so those two things just timeline-wise kind of worked out perfectly for us to take this road trip, because we enjoy it so much. We really enjoy camping. We like being out in nature. We like seeing the national parks and just meeting people in different walks of life. Because we're so often just on work sets and in our bubbles of work zones and on either coast that for us, it's really great to just pick up conversation and make new friends throughout the middle of the country.
LEVI'S®, I FEEL, SO REPRESENTS AMERICANA, AND THE OPEN ROAD, AND ADVENTURE, AND EMBRACING WHO YOU ARE.
WERE YOU ALREADY BIG FANS OF VINTAGE LEVI’S®?
EVAN: Oh, yeah. Huge fans. We only reached out to a couple of companies that we actually are fans of and that we wear normally. And that was just because we didn’t want it to feel inorganic. We are who we are. There are just very few brands that I would say that we're loyal to. So Levi's® was the obvious choice. And we had talked about doing this a couple of years ago originally and then the pandemic hit. So Levi’s® was our first call.
ZOSIA: We'd actually been chatting with Levi's® pre-pandemic about collaborating on something, and then lockdown happened. Then we found out that I was shooting the second season of The Flight Attendant in LA. And we both thought, ”Well, why don't we drive cross country again?" So Evan did all of this research, and found us a trailer. He is a serious jack-of-all-trades. He has this amazing ability to teach himself how to do essentially anything.
WHY DO YOU THINK LEVI’S® ARE SO ICONIC TO ROAD ADVENTURES?
ZOSIA: I think it's the history of it. I think they are, and always have been, a staple of the American adventurer. They're the jeans of the cowboy, they're the jeans of the workman, the farmer. They were made to last, to be worked in, to be LIVED in. They had to hold up and they needed to be comfortable. The fact that they’re fashionable came second. I love that this is an item of clothing that started out with a purpose. And now with Secondhand you’re taking these jeans that already have a history and giving them a second go at another story. And that feels really special to me.
EVAN: And when you think about the origins of Levi's®, right, that it was this workwear thing and it became tough because of this rivet and became an industry standard. It changed workwear. And I think that sort of toughness and the Americana, I think it really is encapsulated in that shot [in the photos] of these three dudes who were standing in front of this bar in Laramie, Wyoming, and they're all in blue jeans. One was a writer, one was a Vietnam vet who was a Native American, and one was a dude who was a Mexican American who had been there forever. And it was an original town where the Western expansion passed through. And I just thought that that was so indicative of why with Levi’s® you fit in everywhere. You fit in there, you fit in in Chicago. There is a consistency throughout the country that people who wear Levi’s® jeans are ubiquitous.
DID YOU CHANGE YOUR STYLE IN DIFFERENT PARTS OF THE COUNTRY AS WELL?
EVAN: Totally. Yeah. I wasn't wearing a bandana in the east OR when I was in Chicago, I was rocking a bandana in a 4x4 in the desert. You know what I mean? But ultimately, we both have our own style, and we brought the pieces we brought, so it wasn't like we were necessarily changing. I think there is always a bit of code switching that people do when they're in new environments to be welcomed into somebody else's space, and to make yourself feel a little bit more comfortable in that space. But ultimately, we are who we are, and we were definitely sometimes the funkiest dressed folks in the room, because we're still who we are, you know?
ZOSIA: It's funny, I kind of kept it the same. I basically ended up in a uniform every day, which I loved so much. I love fashion, but I also love finding an item, or a brand that you love so much, that it's like, "This is all I want to wear." And so, it was my Levi's®, and either a t-shirt and a sweatshirt, or a sweater. And that was my uniform on the road. It took the pressure off when I realized, “Wow. I have fewer items that I love more." And I just mixed and matched and rotated them.
DID YOU FIND A DEEPER APPRECIATION OF CLASSIC AMERICAN STYLE ON THE TRIP?
EVAN: I think we've had that. When you're in the entertainment industry, there's this weird status thing with clothing. And I personally have always been a little put off by that. Zosia's much more into fashion, and the fashion world, because that's part of her. She just enjoys the beauty and the details that go into fashion, and the amount of work that goes into it. But in our walking around lives, we're laid-back people that like things that just work well and look good. I feel totally comfortable wearing jeans to a movie premiere, just as I do going to the bar up here in Upstate New York, or going for a walk in the woods that we live in.
I THINK WE HAVE DIFFERENT STYLES, BUT WE BOTH REALLY APPRECIATE SOMETHING THAT'S SPECIAL, AND A LITTLE BIT DIFFERENT, OR A LITTLE OFF THE BEATEN PATH.
YOU TOUCH ON IT IN THE FILM, BUT HOW IMPORTANT IS VINTAGE TO YOU IN TERMS OF CHANGING THE IMPACT OF HOW WE CONSUME?
ZOSIA: I think it's huge, I think there's a really big misconception about the world of fashion, and recycling. People think, "Oh, I'm going to donate my clothes. I’m doing a good thing.” But I've learned so much this year about what actually happens to so many clothes that are donated. They basically just end up in the landfill. And it's just as harmful to the environment as if you were to go buy new clothes. I've been a thrifter my whole life, I've always loved it. But when I was a kid, I obviously wasn't as aware of the environmental aspect. I like finding unique things that no one else has, and that's always been something I've loved to do. But I think now, brands like Levi's® have gotten so wise, as opposed to being like, "Oh, we're going to recycle these old jeans, or we're going to donate them and have them actually just add to the environmental issues that fast fashion, and fashion industry in general are causing." They're giving clothes a new life.
EVAN: The reason I wrote that was because in my earlier life, I was not an actor. I didn't have anything to do with entertainment and I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. I was an athlete in college and then I had a revelation one night that we are constantly, in our lives, either creating something or we're consuming something. Whether it's conversation, whether it's a work of art, whether it's a piece of an object, we are constantly in a flow of consumption and creation, and that is innate with everything we're doing. And the most important decision for me in my life was to decide what it was I wanted to be a part of creating. So, when we originally started talking about this, the secondhand vintage of it, I was like, oh, this is an “everybody wins” situation. To me, the project of going through the country and putting up a camera and getting these landscapes and getting closer to my experience and having this trip with Zosia, all of that was enough. And then to have something that's like, oh, here's an opportunity to highlight a brand, and a subsection of that brand that is actually positive for society, positive just for the environment, and being able to make old stuff cool again, it's a win-win.
AND IT HELPS US RECONSIDER THE LIFESPAN OF OUR THINGS.
EVAN: Completely. A lot of the content we make, a lot of it feels really disposable. It grabs a person's attention for a very short period of time and then it will be completely irrelevant in six months to a year, and nobody will ever watch it again and nobody will ever experience it again. And that's just the world we live in. So the thought was, oh, I want to make something that has a bit of depth to it, that makes it a little less like a disposable piece of content that won't age with time in the same way that secondhand vintage and Levi's® in general, is a bit ageless, right? There's something universal in the idea of Levi's® and the secondhand vintage, and I tried to figure out how we could make something that had a narrative that felt like it was somehow universal.
DID YOU DISCOVER ANY GOOD VINTAGE FINDS ALONG THE WAY?
ZOSIA: Oh my God. So, we were sadly on a very tight timeline to get out here for me to start shooting, but that's our absolute favorite thing in the world to do. We popped in as many places as we could. And actually, funnily enough, there was a lot of vintage Levi's® throughout the country, which was really awesome.
HOW IMPORTANT IS UNIQUENESS WHEN IT COMES TO YOUR CLOTHES?
ZOSIA: I think we have different styles, but we both really appreciate something that's special, and a little bit different, or a little off the beaten path. So when we went to Chicago, we took some of our Levi's® to the Tailor Shop there, and got to customize a few pieces. It doesn't have to be anything loud, or crazy, but there’s something really fun knowing that you're the only one that has THIS pair of jeans. I put a matte black button on mine, and they patched them up in a super funky way. And it’s not even about wanting to stand out from the crowd. It’s the feeling of excitement about the things in your closet, and the things that you're wearing. Because our clothes are such an outward expression of who we are.
EVAN: We weren't aware that was a thing that was happening, that Levi's® was doing that at their Tailor Shops. But it was awesome. And I was like, oh, this is such a smart idea. This is such a great way to take a pair of mom jeans and make them into something that is both modern and also has the feeling of something from a bygone era. It wasn't something we were super into before, other than I always have some pins on my jean jackets from my friends' bands or places we've been. I just think it's fun to have a bumper sticker of sorts, and it kind of prompts conversations of your experiences and what you're about. In the same way where we wear our costumes, what we put on those costumes also tells a story. Whether I'm wearing a Star Wars T-shirt or I'm in a black turtleneck, you're getting a lot of information from that. And the Tailor Shop, it shows the things you're into. That's why I thought it was a great idea.
ANY ESPECIALLY MEMORABLE ADVENTURES FROM YOUR TRIP?
ZOSIA: In the last film, there's a bit about this one spot that we stopped at. I think it was our last spot before we got to LA, in Kanab, Utah, where I do a bunch of work with Best Friends Animal Society, which is this huge animal rescue group. They have their sanctuary there, so that was a total happy accident. Evan was like, "Oh my God, we can go to Best Friends." So the footage of us with the horse is from Best Friends. I'm a rider, and they had been building this huge horse rehabilitation center the last time we were there three years ago, and we got to go see it finished. We ended up staying in this amazing RV park called Dark Sky, it's one of the coolest places we've ever stayed. And we became friends with the owners and have stayed in touch. Whether it's big or small, there are always surprises on the road. You hope for the most part that they're good, like making new friends. Sometimes they’re bad, like your brake lights going out…But even still, it always ends up a story, and it's always an adventure.