Passage IV

Blue Jeans: Everything Old Is New Again

In the late 1800s, clothing store owner, Levi Strauss patented the practice of putting rivets, tiny metal studs, on the stress points of men's "waist overalls." Waist overalls, which eventually would be known as Jeans, were made out of denim, a durable cotton cloth used especially for work clothes. Strauss's denim pants with rivets were the first pants to be called jeans. Over time, various styles and designers' of jeans have garnered a share of public devotion. Independent of brand names, though, jeans have historic significance regardless of brand name and, for many of us, emotional significance.

(50) Through the 1920s, waist overalls or jeans we're primary considered work pants. However, in the 1930s, due to the increasingly admired image of the rugged, jeans-wearing Western cowboy, jeans became associated with the two main real values that are held by daring adventurers whose lives aren't average. In the 1950s, young film stars such as James Dean and Marlon Brando, T-shirted and jeans-wearing renegades who listened to rock music, wore their blue jeans in the spirit of rebellion. In the 1960s and 1970s, hippies personalized there jeans—which had taken on the relaxed look of the wide "bell" bottom—with embroidery, quilted patches, and beads. (54)

[1] Boot-cut, low-rise, extra-baggy carpenter-style jeans—an assortment of playful styles一gained popularity in the 1990s. [2] High-fashion clothing designers commonly featured jeans as a part of their clothing lines in the 1980s, and designer jeans quickly became part of mainstream fashion. [3] Styles continue to evolve, of course. [4] Every year it seems there's a new favorite look or fit. (56)

As jeans-lovers have entered the corporate world, they have popularized a casual work look, wearing jeans as the basic wardrobe to seem laid-back but actually ambitious new professionalism. Jeans, at once gritty and earthy, urban and rural, fashionable and simple, are casual but also convey an underlying assertiveness that no other staple of our wardrobes can match.