History

"There's so much pride and passion wrapped up in being a skinhead. The same sort of pride and passion that fills the football terraces every Saturday. It's a sense of belonging, of being someone and of being with your own kind" (Spirit of '69, a skinhead bible; by G Marshall, 1991)

In 1968 the skinhead movement started in London. At first the jeans were worn baggier, either turned up or simply cut off. In 1969 the bleachers became popular and have been ever since. The bleach was thrown on the jeans laying flat in the bath or wrapped up and thrown in a bucket full of bleach. The idea is that they should resemble army camouflage trousers. It was only in the '70s that the tight leg jeans came into fashion among skinheads. Today whether you wear tight, regular or baggy jeans is completely up to you as all three fashions are widely used.

It has always been very difficult to work out the right technique to make a good bleacher and with a pair of Levis costing around £55, any mistake is expensive. Hence a large online community has grown - websites and forums with mates comparing notes on how best to get the look, with varying degrees of success. You can read all sorts of recommendations on these sites from the obvious to the absolutely ridiculous. We all have had our experiences with the stench of bleach stinking out the whole flat and hanging around for days. Not to mention, burning hands and eyes from the fumes. That's why these days a lot of skinheads try to buy them ready-made. There are a number of websites selling them on line, but we never saw anything we really liked and after the last skinhead dedicated shop in London, "the Last Resort", shut down, many years ago now, finding anything has become almost impossible.

With that in mind, we started experimenting with bleaching. With the help of some old skin mates, who were there when it all started, we soon managed to find out the best way of getting some really great bleachers made. Mates in London saw our work and asked us to make some for them too. When people started stopping us in pubs to ask about our bleachers, we realised that a lot of people were after them. We then started looking for a shop that would be interested in re-selling them to the public, where people could try them on and get the best fit. So, in 2005 "Bleachers and CO" was born - at first only supplying one shop in London. It all took off quite quickly and from that one shop in London we expanded - first Manchester, then various shops in Europe and more recently the USA.