The History of Jeans
18th Century
At first, jean cloth was made from a mixture of
things. However, in the 18th century as trade, slave labor, and cotton
plantations increased, jean cloth was made completely from cotton. Workers
wore it because the material was very strong and it did not wear out
easily. It was usually dyed with indigo, a dye taken from plants in the
Americas and India, which made jean cloth a dark blue color.
19th Century
1848: gold was found in California and the
famous Gold Rush began. The gold miners wanted clothes that were strong
and did not tear easily.
1853: a man named Leob Strauss left his
home in New York and moved to San Francisco, where he started a wholesale
business, supplying clothes. Strauss later changed his name from Leob to
Levi. A big problem with the miners' clothes were the pockets, which
easily tore away from the jeans. A man called Jacob Davis had the idea of
using metal rives to hold the pockets and the jeans together so that they
wouldn't tear. Davis wanted to patent his idea, but he didn't have enough
money.
1872: Davis wrote to Levi and offered
Strauss a deal if he would pay for the patent. Strauss accepted, and he
started making copper-riveted "waist overalls" as jeans were called
then.
1873: The first riveted clothing was made
and sold
1886: Levi sewed a leather label on their
jeans. The label showed a picture of a pair of jeans that were being
pulled between two horses. This was to advertise how strong Levi jeans
were: even two horses could not tear them apart.
1891: Levi Strauss & Co.'s patent for
riveted clothing goes public and dozens of companies begin to use the idea.
20th Century
1930's: Hollywood made lots of western
movies. cowboys, who often wore jeans in the movies, became very
popular. Many Americans who lived in the eastern states went for vacations
on "dude ranches" and took paris of
denim "waist overalls"
back east with them when they went home.
1940's: Fewer jeans were made during the
time of World War II, but "waist overalls" were introduced to the
world by American soldiers, who sometimes wore them when they were off
duty. After the war, Levi began to see their clothes outside the American
West. Rival companies, like Wrangler and Lee, began to compete with Levi
for a share of this new market.
1950's: Denim became popular with many
young people. It was the symbol of the teenage rebel in TV programs and
movies (like James Dean in the 1955 movie Rebel Without a Cause).
Some schools in the USA banned students from wearing denim. Teenagers
called the waist overalls "jean pants" and the name stayed.
1960's: Many university and college
students wore jeans. Different styles of jeans were made, to match the
60's fashions (embroidered jeans, painted jeans, psychedelic jeans). In
many non-western countries, jeans became a symbol of "Western
decadence" and were very hard to get. US companies said that they
often received letters from people all around the world asking them to send the
writer a pair of jeans.
1970's: As regulations on world trade
became more relaxed in the late 70's, jeans started to be made more and more in
sweatshops in countries in the South. Because the workers were paid very
little, jeans became cheaper. More people in the countries of the South
started wearing jeans.
1980's: Jeans finally became high fashion
clothing, when famous designers started making their own styles of jeans, with
their own labels on them. Sales of jeans went up and up.
1990's: In the world wide recession of the
1990's, the sale of jeans stopped growing. The Youth market wasn't
particularly interested in 501s and other traditional jeans styles, mainly
because their parents: the generation born in "blue" were still busy
squeezing their aging bodies into them. Since no teenager would be caught
dead in anything their parents were wearing, the latest generation of rebellions
youth turned to other fabrics and styles. They still wore denim, but it
had to be in different finishes, new cuts, shapes, styles, or forms. Jeans
were named the "single most potent symbol of American style on planet
earth".
