"The Facts of Life" are even more glorious with Gloria Vanderbilt jeans

When this author rewatched the "Three's Company" series a few years back (Suzanne Somers, rest in peace), I was tickled pink to see Janet and Chrissy so often arrayed in the Gloria Vanderbilt jeans I have loved all my life. Oh, joy! Not only the standard GV blue jeans with orange stitching that everyone knew so well back then, but an array of other colors, as well. I was so tickled, actually, that I had no choice but to catalog all the GV jeans appearances in "Three's Company," being the highly geeky girl that I am. This resulted in the January 2, 2018 blog post. 

Now, I just started rewatching "The Facts of Life." As with "Three's Company," it's the first time I've seen this series since it originally aired. I loved the show so much when I was a little girl. Just ate it up and never missed an episode. And now in the rewatching, what do I see? An array, once again, of glorious Gloria Vanderbilt jeans! I don't have quite enough hours in the day right now to catalog them in the same granular fashion I did with "Three's," but I'm glad to give an overview!!!! It won't even be considered a labor of love! Because it's totally not a labor -- I love every minute of it. In fact, the appearances are so robust I have to wonder if Murjani was a wardrobe contributor on purpose. You know, kinda like Mercedes-Benz supplying cars to the "Wonder Woman" series and receiving a line in the credits. Who knows? 

I'm going to start with the first season, as of the end of October 2023, then come back to this blog post and add to it as I move through the episodes in the coming months:

Season 1 -- 1979-1980

• Blair:
• Standard blue jeans with orange stitching
• Black with white stitching (could be fine corduroys -- hard to tell)
• Possibly: Tan pants shown in the clip in the show's intro as she's jokingly spanking Mrs. Garrett (although it's hard to tell in that scene if they're GVs)
• Tootie: 
• Pink with white stitching
• Green with white stitching
• Sue Ann:
• Blue jeans that are definitely GVs, as she stands next to Blair with her own standard blue jeans on, but it's hard to tell if Sue Ann's jeans have the standard orange stitching or a lighter color like white or beige
• Molly: 
• Standard blue jeans with orange stitching
• Natalie: 
• Blue sheeting pants with orange-ish stitching

Season 2 -- 1980-1981

• Blair:
• Standard blue jeans with orange stitching
• Tootie:
• Turquoise blue with white stitching

I will note, as well, that the girls were seen in other designer jeans. Blair wore a pair of Sasson jeans in Season 1, and the other girls wore some Jordache a time or two, including Blair's cousin Geri in Season 4.

There's our beautiful Blair Warner, as portrayed by the equally beautiful Lisa Whelchel, admiring herself in the mirror and sporting the standard GV jeans with orange stitching -- the most widely known and popular version of GV jeans back then in the late 1970s. This is a shot from the final episode of Season 1 of "The Facts of Life," when the cast of girl students at Eastland School was larger and even included a very young Molly Ringwald (just 11 years old). In the second season, the show zeroed in on four girls, including Blair, and remained that way through the rest of the seasons.

Tootie, as played by Kim Fields, wears green GV jeans with the white trademark swan over the front right coin pocket (when GVs were in colors like this, they were considered jeans, basically, but they tended to be more like sheeting pants than denim material). Below, she's got her pink pair on -- she wore the pink pair multiple times in the first season, cuffed up to her knees since she was in roller skates through the whole season. Also in the photo below, Blair's got her standard GV jeans on.

And one more note: There are at least four episodes of "The Facts of Life" that reference Gloria Vanderbilt the person, at least through the beginning of Season 4. One such example is an episode in Season 3 that served as a "backdoor pilot" that never materialized, set at a boys' military academy. In the storyline, one of the boys, who has a date with Blair, pretends to have dated "Gloria Vanderbilt's daughter," and Blair remembers (rightly!) later on in the episode that GV did not have a daughter.

#GloriaVanderbilt #designerjeans #1970s #classictelevision