The 1976 501® Jean found itself at the center of many transformative events. It was the year punk broke out, with the release of the debut album by the Ramones and the first single by the Sex Pistoles, “Anarchy in the UK” - a song title that sugested revolution was in the air. It also marked the U.S. Bicentennial, the 200th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Patriotic celebrations took place across the country, providing respite from the bleak Vietnam War years that had recently ended. As the ultimate iconic American Garment, the 501® Jean fit in perfectly. A pair of 501® Jeans from 1976 had a slightly slimmer leg and lower rise that their earlier counterparts. Like 501® Jeans from years before, they still had a signature button fly and orange contrast stitching. The fabric was a bright shade of sulfur-dyed indigo – a method first introduced by Cone Mills in the 1970s to get more distance out of their petrolem-based indigo dye. In 1971, the Levi’s® red Tab changed from the “LEVI’S®” big “E” logo to “Levi’s” with a lowercase “e”, conforming to the trademark Batwing, deisgn created by Walter Landor in 1967. When vintage Levi’s® jeans became a hot collectable in the late 1980s, the Tab’s design was a dividing line between what was increasingly rare and what was readily available: “big E” (vintage) and “small e” (not vintage). These days, the small “e” jeans from the late 1970s are also hard to find, and highly collectable.