Peanuts in Denim

I’ve watched the Peanuts Christmas special probably fifty times, and I’ll watch it fifty more. The newer 3D movie is fine, but nothing beats the original. I’ll grab a Peanuts comic wherever I find one—train stations, random kiosks, wherever—because you never know when you want to spend an hour in Charlie Brown’s world.

The thing about Peanuts is it actually works. Kids get the jokes, adults get what the jokes are really about, which is usually some small failure or wanting something that doesn’t happen. Schulz knew that better than almost anyone. He drew that anxiety and hope into every strip for fifty years.

He stopped in 2000 and died the day before the last one ran. No one’s continued it since, which is rare enough to matter.

So Levi’s did a Peanuts collection, and honestly, it could have been terrible. Collaborations usually are. But this one’s just clothes with Snoopy on them—jeans, hoodies, jackets, a linen tote with a dumb ’Totes’ pun—and it works because it doesn’t try to be anything more than that. It’s not a statement. It’s not deep. It’s just Schulz’s drawings on fabric.

Peanuts is still here, still making people smile, still looking like it did forty years ago. Schulz made something that doesn’t need to be improved.