Blue Jeans

There is probably no more versatile a material than denim - in the past 130 years what started as a humble worker's cloth became the defining fabric of the 20th Century.

It's hard to imagine its appeal ever diminishing with designers constantly coming up with new ways to make jeans fashionable.

Jennifer Chevalier looks back at the history of denim with Alice Harris, the author of The Blue Jean. 'The Blue Jean' is published by Powerhouse Cultural Entertainment Books; ISBN: 1576871509 'Denim: From Cowboys to Catwalks a Visual History of the World's Most Legendary Fabric' by Graham Marsh and Paul Trynka, Fashion Editor June Marsh, Published by Aurum Press, ISBN: 1854107917

Stone Washed...

Ripped...

Acid Washed...

Zipped...

Button Front...

Low Rise...

Boot Leg...

Flares...

Straight Legged...

Alexander Mcqueen... John Galliano... did ball gowns in denim.

Sofas...chairs... luggage...everything is going to be covered in denim.

There's no doubt that we can do a million and one things in denim. But, where did this flexible cloth come from. Some think that denim was French cloth from the town of Nimes, literally de Nimes. The name jeans is thought to come from the rough coveralls worn from the Genoas sailors. And as these men were called Genes so were their trousers. Whatever their origins, jeans got their real start in the 19th century in the American West.

Martin Raymond of the lifestyle magazine 'Viewpoint' -

“I think it's ironic that what started off as a European tradition went to America where you had the railroads opening up in the west. They needed to have a uniform or covering for the men to protect themselves with, something that was durable. So you had Lee, Levi, Wrangler all vying for what was essentially a particular type of market, which was railroaders, people working on the docks, people working in very hard and difficult environments.”

“All the working men would wear overalls, some of them wouldn't be the denim that we know today, it would be brown cotton duck, quite thick, quite hard wearing, but they weren't called jeans then, they were called waist overalls, they had a little back belt called a cinch, because people didn't wear belts then. And they had the rivets, they only had one pocket, not two, but the blue ones that were made from denim became the most popular.” - June Marsh coauthor of the book

Legend has it, that in the 1870's Levi Strauss teamed up with an inventive tailor to patent the idea of copper rivets on pockets and never looked back. Other companies started to produce jeans too, all for the working man. But that didn't stop cow girls wearing jeans too. Even women from the east coast got a taste of denim when they went West to holiday on dude ranches.

June Marsh - “Women would go there and play cowboys, they'd dress up in denim jeans, check neckerchiefs, and cowboy boots and there weren't any jeans specifically designed for women at the time, so they'd buy Lee or Levi men's jeans.”

In 1935, the first jeans that were designed for women were launched. And the association of Nevada dude ranch, may have helped the style seem a little libertine.

June Marsh - “The divorce laws were very lenient, so a women looking for a divorce could go to a ranch, stay there for 8 weeks and be granted a divorce. So, a lot of women went back to the East coast, back to the cities with a new affection for denim."

Martin Raymond - “During the war a whole generation of women who were suddenly working, on the docks, driving ambulances, building planes in the ammunitions and aircraft industry, and denim became associated with the idea of the women who were part of the male world.”

June Marsh - ”Women kept them (jeans) in their wardrobes after the war, but, probably a majority of the women went back to wearing dresses in the home, when their husbands came back from the war.”

Women may have shied away from denim but in the 1950's jeans were about to become the uniform for a new army, the American teenagers.

In the 50's it really became a modern approach to dressing with stars like Sandra Dee, Natalie Wood, Audrey Hepburn, they were being photographed not in ball gowns, but in ready to wear, active wear that the rest of us could relate to.

Mechanics wore them, bikers wore them, they were were all counter-culture icons that teenagers wanted to plug into.

Designer jeans really got their kick with Calvin Klein. In 1980, 15 year old Brook Sheilds tossed her hair, looked into the camera and said “Nothing comes between me and my Calvin's.” It went through the roof and sold millions of pairs of jeans. Calvin Klein was the first designer to spot the relation between sex and jeans and marketing. So when he put Brooke Shields into her jeans "Nothing comes between me and my Calvin's” the idea that she wore nothing under her jeans was quite sexual, and quite charged with all the messages that marketeers have plugged into.

One thing's clear the old cloth has a bright future.

More and more we see denim as a basic fabric to carry new technology, so we're already seeing denim that when you brush it, it gets off stains or when you touch it, it makes sounds - sonic denim or sonic fabrics, the use of denim to carry information and read information from your body, an entire new generation of technologies. .