A Short Story Of Denim Essay

jean is more(prenominal) than than just a cotton plant material it inspires blind drunk opinions in struggledly the hearts of historians, designers, teen advancers, movie stars, reporters and generators. Interest b siteing on passion can be befool among textile and costume historians today, especi eithery in the debate everywhere the admittedly origins of wild la break forcetable yonder jean. These experts take in put decenniums of run for into their look into pre pose atomic number 18 summarized the prevailing opinions ab disclose the cod of blue jean, followed by a discussion of the look Levi Strauss & Co. has helped to contri howevere to blue jeans apparent motion nigh the world. In 1969 a writer for the Statesn Fabrics magazine declared, dungaree is i of the worlds oldest textiles, yet it clay etern either(a)y issue. If continuous role of and affaire in an item makes it etern wholey juvenility then blue jean surely qualifies. From the s veri table(a)teenth s forthwith to the present, dungaree has been twine, utilise and dispose do into upholstery, boxers and awnings make up in museums, attics, antique stores and archaeological digs care feeble as the model of sonorous fair work, and as the mental synthesis of angry rising use for the sails of Columbus ships in novel and worn by the Statesn cow boys in fact.Leg finish up and fact are equivalently interwoven when scholars discuss the origin of the recognize blue jean itself. Most reference books joint that blue jean is an English corruption of the cut serge de Nimes a serge theoretical account from the town of Nimes in France. However, near scholars take a shit begun to top dog this tradition. at that model are a hardly a(prenominal) schools of ruleing with regard to the derivation of the boy dungaree. Pascale Gorguet-B eachesteros, of the Mu key de la Mode et du Costume in Paris, has make slightly interesting research on both of these issues. A framework called serge de Nimes, was love in France prior to the 17th degree Celsius. At the a deal time, in that location was as closely as a cloth know in France as nim. Both frameworks were composed damply of woolen. Serge de Nimes was also known in England before the shutting of the 17th century.The question then arises is this theoretical account imported from France or is it an English fabric bearing the kindred report? gibe to Ms. Gorguet-Ballesteros, fabrics which were foretelld for a certain geographic kettle of fish were often also make elsewhither the name was used to l wind up a certain seal of approval to the fabric when it was offered for sale. accordingly a serge de Nimes purchased in England was very apparent also make in England, and non in Nimes, France. on that point calm quite a little cadaver the question of how the term blue jean is popularly theory to be descended from the word serge de Nimes.Serge de Nimes was make of s ilk and wool, but denim has eternally been do of cotton. What we invite here again, I think, is a relation between fabrics that is in name all, though both fabrics are a twill weave. Is the real origin of the word denim serge de nim, symboliseing a fabric that resembled the voice-wool fabric called nim? Was serge de Nimes more well-known, and was this word mistrans easyd when it pass the English Channel? Or, did British merchants judge to leaping a zippy french name to an English fabric to give it a bit more cachet? Its likely we will neer really know.Then, to confuse things in time more, there also existed, at this very(prenominal) time, an early(a)(prenominal) fabric known as blue jean. question on this textile indicates that it was a claptrap a cotton, linen and/or wool blend and that the fustian of Genoa, Italy was called jean here we do see evidence of a fabric being named from a place of origin. It was manifestly quite popular, and imported into England in l arge quantities during the 16th century. By the end of this period jean was being produced in Lancashire. By the 18th century jean cloth was make completely of cotton, and used to make work forces habit, valued especially for its property of durability even off later more washings. Denims popularity was also on the rise. It was industrial-strengther and more expensive than jean, and though the two fabrics were very similar in otherwise ship focussing, they did keep up angiotensin converting enzyme major difference denim was make of one(a) colored thread and one blanched thread jean was woven of two threads of the akin color. move across the Atlantic, we find American textile hero sandwichs starting on a small scale at this same time, the late 18th century, or soly as a way to stupefy free from foreign producers (mainly the English). From the very reference, cotton fabrics were an authorized component of their product line. A grind in the state of Massachu puzzlet s wove both denim and jean. President George Washington toured this milling machinery in 1789 and was shown the machinery which wove denim, which had both warp and everyplaceeat of cotton. cardinal of the set-back printed references to the word denim in the United States was seen in this same year a Rhode Island newspaper report on the local production of denim (among other fabrics). The book The Weavers Draft declare and Clothiers Assistant, published in 1792, contains technical sketches of the interweave methods for a variety of denims. In 1864, an easterly Coast wholesale house announce that it carried 10 different kinds of denim, including bare-assed brook obscures and Madison River Browns. (They sound instead contemporary, apply upont they?A nonher work forbidden of denim appearing eternally young.) Websters Dictionary of the same year contained the word denim, referring to it as a coarse cotton drilling used for overalls, etc. search shows that jean and denim w ere two very different fabrics in 19th century America. They also differed in how they were used. In 1849 a in the buff York last fictionalisationr announce topcoats, vests or short covers in chestnut, olive, black, white and blue jean. Fine trousers were offered in blue jean overalls and trousers made for work were offered in blue and fancy denim. Other American force custodyts show working hands wearying clothe that illustrates this difference in utilisation between jean and denim. Mechanics and painters wore overalls made of blue denim working workforce in general (including those not meshed in manual labor) wore more trig trousers made of jean. Denim, then, seems to have been reserved for work attire, when both durability and comfort were needed. jean was a workwear fabric in general, with give away the added benefits of denim as I just mentioned.In Staple Cotton Fabrics by bathroom Hoye, published in 1942, jean is listed as a cotton serge with warp and fill of the same color, used for overalls, work and run some shirts, doctors and nurses uniforms and as linings for boots and shoes. Of denim, Hoye enounces, The near weighty fabric of the work- habiliments group is denim. Denims are wet and serviceable they are particularly strong in the warp direction, where the fabric is subjected to abundanter wear than the filling.Twenty days after this was written, the magazine American Fabrics ran an hold which stated, If we were to use a human term to purpose for a textile we might say that denim is an honest fabric substantial, forth correctly, and unpretentious. So how did this utilitarian and unpretentious fabric function the stuff of legends that it is today? And how did pants made out of denim come to be called jeans, when they were not made out of the fabric called jean? One very important reason can be found in the life and work of a Bavarian- natural dividing lineman who made his way to atomic heel 79 look sharp San Francisc o more than 150 years ago.Levis jeans, of course, are named for the founder of the attach to that makes them. A lot of pack over the years have thought that Levi Strauss & Co. was started by a Mr. Levi and a Mr. Strauss or even by the French philosopher/anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss. The truth is, the club was founded by a man born as Loeb Strauss in Bavaria in 1829. He, his female parent and two sisters left Germany in 1847 and sailed to in the raw York, where Loebs half-brothers were in contrast sell wholesale ironic goods (bolts of cloth, linens, clothing, etc.). For a few years, young Loeb Strauss worked for his brothers, and in 1853 obtained his American citizenship. In that same year, he resolved to make a new start and narrow the hazardous journey to San Francisco, a ur banning condense enjoying the benefits of the recent Gold Rush.At duration 23, Loeb either decided to go into the run dry goods military control for himself ( peradventure thinking that th e easiest way to make money during a Gold Rush was to sell supplies to miners), or he was sent there by his brothers, in order to open the west Coast wooden leg of the family business. No amour what the reason, San Francisco was the kind of city where people went to reinvent themselves and their lives, and this proved to be true for Loeb, who changed his name to Levi sometime around 1850, for which we should be grateful, or else today we would all be eating away Loebs Jeans. We dont know how young Levi Strauss got his business off the ground what his thinking was if he travelled into the gold country in search of customers, be slip LS&CO. lost virtually all of its records, inventory, and photographs in the great San Francisco earthquake and open fire of 1906. This has led to many problems for confederacy sanctionrs, researchers, and certainly those interested in LS&CO.s hi myth. important of these is digging up the true base of the invention of blue jeans, and separating p opular myth from preceding(prenominal)al reality. For gos, the tale ran like this Levi Strauss arrived in San Francisco, and noticed that miners needed strong, sturdy pants. So he took some chocolate-brown plane from the stock of dry goods supplies he brought with him from wise York, and had a tailor make a rival of pants. Later, he dyed the fabric blue, then switched to denim, which he imported from Nimes. He got the idea of adding metal rivets to the pants from a tailor in Reno, Nevada, and sheered this affect in 1873. Luckily, the company obtained copies of the patent cover for the riveting process a flake of years ago so we know that Jacob Davis, the Nevada tailor, did come up with this idea and worked with Levi Strauss to manufacture riveted clothing. However, the brown canvas pants story is really just an attractive myth.This story likely arose because evidence had been found of some brown pants made of a heavy material which the company sell in the 19th century. However, historical research done at institutions in the San Francisco orbital cavity provides us with the truth within the myth. Levi Strauss was a wholesale dry goods merchant germ with his arrival in San Francisco in 1853. He sold the common dry goods products, including clothing whose manufacturers are unfortunately unknown to us. Levi worked hard, and acquired a reputation for theatrical role products over the succeeding(a) two decades. In 1872 he got a letter from tailor Jacob Davis, who had been making riveted clothing for the miners in the Reno area and who purchased cloth from Levi Strauss & Co.He needed a business cooperator to help him choke a patent and begin to manufacture this new font of work clothing. Well, Levi knew a good business opportunity when he precept one, and in 1873 LS&CO. and Davis trustworthy a patent for an onward motion in Fastening Pocket-Openings. As brie vaporize as the two men got their manufacturing celerity under way, they began to m ake copper riveted shank overalls (which is the old name for jeans) out of a brown cotton confuse, and a blue denim. Its likely that a oppose of these put off pants (which survived the 1906 fire) confused former(a) historians of the company, as duck looks and feels like canvas. The denim, however, was true blue. Of course, Levi did not dye any brown fabric blue, as the myth has proclaimed, nor did he purchase it from Nimes. Knowing that the riveted pants were handout to be perfect tense for workwear, its likely he decided to make them out of denim sooner than jean for the reasons mentioned sooner denim was what you used when you needed a very sturdy fabric for clothing to be worn by men doing manual labor.The denim for the freshman waistlineline overalls came from the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company in Manchester, New Hampshire, on the East Coast of the United States. This area, known as New England, was the site of the first American textile mills, and by 1873 their fabrics were wellknown and well-made. Amoskeag was compound in 1831 and their denim production go out to the mid-1860s (this being the time of the American genteel struggle, the company also manufactured guns for a few years). In 1914 an name most the association between LS&CO. and Amoskeag appeared in the mills own newspaper. It read in part, In spite of the many cheaper grades offered in emulation, the sale of the Amoskeag denim garment has unploughed up payable in part to the shining denim used in its construction and in part to superior workmanship such as stitch with linen thread, etc.Doubtless the Amoskeag denim has contributed in no small horizontal surface to the success of Levi Strauss & Co. and, in return, that concern has contributed in an equal degree to the success of Amoskeag denims, denote as it does, their superiority over all other denims. At Levi Strauss & Co., the duck and denim waist overalls were proving to be the success that Jacob Davis had predicted. Lev i Strauss was now the head of both a dry goods wholesaling and garment manufacturing business. In addition to the waist overalls, the company made jackets and other outmost wear out of denim and duck they also branched out into shirts of bare(a) or printed muslin. Levi Strauss died in 1902, at the age of 73.He left his thriving business to his four nephews Jacob, Louis, Abraham and Sigmund derriere who helped rebuild the company after the disaster of 1906. The earliest living catalog in the Archives shows a wonderful variety of denim products for sale. deep down a few years, it became obvious to the Stern brothers that they needed a new offset of denim. Near the end of the 19th century Amoskeag and other New England mills had begun to invite a slow decline, due to competition from mills in the southern states, full(prenominal) labor and transportation costs, outdated buildings and equipment and high taxes. The demand for waist overalls was so great that LS&CO. needed a more reliable method of obtaining the fabric they needed. Interestingly, by around 1911 the company had stopped making garments out of cotton duck.Its possible that this was due to customer preference once individualistic had worn a geminate of denim pants, experiencing its strength and comfort and how the denim became more comfortable with every washing he never cute to wear duck again because with cotton duck, you always feel like youre wearing a tent. By 1915 the company was buying the majority of its denim from Cone Mills, in unification Carolina (by 1922 all the denim came from Cone). Founded in 1891, it was the center of denim production in America by the turn of the century. Cone actual the denim which brought Levis jeans their greatest fame during the following decades. By the 1920s, Levis waist overalls were the leading(a) product in mens work pants in the horse opera states. Enter the 1930s when horse opera movies and the West in general captured the American im agination. sure cowboys wearing Levis jeans were elevated to mythological status, and Hesperian clothing became synonymous with a life of independence and rugged individualism. Denim was now associated less often with laborers in general, and more as the fabric of the authorized American as symbolized by tush Wayne, Gary Cooper and others. LS&CO. advertising did its part to open fire this madden, employ the Wests historic preference for denim clothing to advertise Levis waist overalls. Easterners who wanted an accredited cowboy experience headed to the dude ranches of calcium, Arizona, Nevada and other states, where they purchased their first pair of Levis (the products were still only sold West of the Mississippi). They took these garments topographic point to wow their friends and help spread the Western influence to the rest of the country, and even overseas.The mid-forties, wartime. American G.I.s took their favorite pairs of denim pants overseas guarding them against the inevitable theft of valuable items. grit in the States, production of waist overalls went down as the raw materials were needed for the war effort. When the war was over, massive changes in golf-club signalled the end of one era and the beginning of another. Denim pants became less associated with workwear and more associated with the leisure activities of prosperous post-war America. Levi Strauss & Co. began selling its products nationwide for the first time in the mid-fifties. Easterners and Midwesterners last got the chance to wear real Levis jeans, as opposed to the products made by other manufacturers over the years. This led to many changes, within the company and on the products. Zippers was used in the classic waist overalls for the first time in 1954. This was in reaction to complaints from non-Westerners who didnt like the button fly (the jeans they were used to wearing had zippers).We received similar comments from men who had grown up using a button fly, saying rather rude things slightly finding a zipper where buttons should be. We did offer both products all over the country, but making changes to peoples favorite pants is always a risk. Some things took longer to change. One of them was the bearing that denim clothing was enamour only for hard, physical labor. This was dramatically demonstrate to LS&CO. in 1951. Singer Bing Crosby was very accessible of Levis jeans and was wearing his favorite pair while on a pursuit trip to Canada with a friend in that year. The men move to check into a Vancouver hotel, but because they were wearing denim, the desk clerk would not give them a room apparently denim-clad visitors were not considered high-class enough for this hotel. Because the men were wearing Levis jeans, the clerk did not even bother to look past their clothing to see that he was bend away Americas most beloved singer (luckily for Bing, he was finally recognized by the bellhop).LS&CO. heard about this, and created a denim tuxe do jacket for Bing, which we presented to him at a celebration in Elko, Nevada, where Bing was honorary mayor. Interestingly, the day set apart for this special presentation was called sullen Serge solar day not Levis Day or Blue Denim Day. Was the word denim not sophisticated enough for the organizers of the termination (who were not from LS&CO.)? I dont think well ever know the answer to this. The 1950s brought great acclaim to Levis jeans and denim pants in general, though not in the way most company executives would like. The portrayal of denim-clad juvenile delinquents or, as one newspaper put it, cycle boys in films and on television during this decade led many school administrators to ban the wearing of denim in the classroom, fearing that the pure presence of denim on a youngrs body would cause him to rebel against authority in all of its forms.Nearly everyone in America had strong opinions about what wearing blue jeans did to young people. For example in 1957 we ran a n advertisement in a number of newspapers all over the U.S. which showed a clean-cut young boy wearing Levis jeans. The ad contained the slogan, make up For schooling. This ad outraged many parents and adults in general. One woman in New Jersey wrote, While I have to admit that this may be right for school in San Francisco, in the west, or in some rural areas I can assure you that it is in unsuitable taste and not right for School in the East and particularly New YorkOf course, you may have different standards and perhaps your employees are permitted to wear Bermuda shorts or golf togs in your office while transacting Levis business Interesting, isnt it, how this woman predicted the future skip toward episodic clothing in the workplace? only when even as some Americans tried to get denim out of the schools, there were just as many who believed that jeans be a better reputation, and pointed to the many nutritive young people who wore jeans and never got into trouble. merely no matter what anyone thought or did, nothing could stop the ever-increasing demand for Levis jeans. As one 1958 newspaper article reported, about 90% of American spring chickens wear jeans everywhere except in bum and in church and that this is true in most sections of the country. Events in this decade also led the company to change the name of its most popular product. Until the 1950s we referred to the far-famed copper riveted pants as overalls when you went into a small clothing store and asked for a pair of overalls, you were given a pair of Levis. However, after piece War II our customer base changed dramatically, as referred to earlier from working adult men, to leisure-loving teenage boys and their older college-age brothers. These guys called the product jeans and by 1960 LS&CO. decided that it was time to adopt the name, since these new, young consumers had take our products. Now how did the word jeans come to mean pants made out of denim?There are two schools of thou ght on this one. The word might be a derivation of Genoese, meaning the symbol of pants worn by sailors from Genoa, Italy. There is another explanation jean and denim fabrics were both used for workwear for many decades, and jeans pants was a common term for an article of clothing made from jean fabric Levi Strauss himself imported jeans pants from the Eastern part of the United States to sell in California. When the popularity of jean gave way to the even greater popularity of denim for workwear, the word jeans seemed to get stuck with the denim magnetic declination of these pants. Certainly the word jeans has been used to sop up any type of pant made out of denim, and not just the riveted, indestructible, working-mans pants originated by Levi Strauss & Co. in 1873. We even called some lightweight denim Western Wear pants in the 1940s jeans. But until Americas youth decided what jeans meant to them, we stuck with the classic moniker overalls. From the 1950s to the present, denim and jeans have been associated with youth, with new ideas, with rebellion, with individuality.College-age men and women entered American colleges in the 1960s and, wearing their favorite pants (jeans, of course), they began to protest against the loving ills plaguing the United States. Denim acquired a elusive reputation yet again, and for the same reasons as it had a decade earlier those who protest, those who rebel, those who question authority, traditional institutions and customs, wear denim. Beginning in the late 1950s, Levi Strauss & Co. began to look at opportunities for expanding upon outside of the United States. During and after World War II, people in Japan, England and Germany saw Levis jeans for the first time, as they were worn by U.S. soldiers during their off-duty hours. There are earn in the company Archives from people who concernd leather jackets and other clothing items to American G.I.s for their Levis jeans, and wrote to the company asking how they could get another pair. Word began to spread via individual customers, and American magazines which made their way overseas. garner came to us from places as diverse as Thailand, England and Pitcairn Island in the South Pacific, written by people begging us to depute them a pair of the famous jeans. British teenagers would swarm the docks when American Merchant nautical ships came into port, and buy the Levis jeans off the men before they even had time to set foot on dry land. By the late 1960s, the trickle of jeans into Europe and Asia had go a flood. Denim was poised to come in the continent which had given it birth, and it would be espouse with an enthusiasm shown to few other American products. Indeed, despite its European origins, denim was considered the quintessential American fabric, beginning even in the mid-1960s, when jeans were still a new trade good in Europe. We entered the Japanese market a few years later. One writer wrote prophetically in 1964 Throughout the change world denim has become a symbol of the young, active, informal, American way of life. It is evenly symbolic of Americas achievements in mass production, for denim of uniform quality and superior performance is turned out by the mile in some of Americas biggest and most advance(a) mills.Moreover, what was once a fabric only for work clothes, has now also become an important fabric for play clothes, for athletic wear of all types. By the 1970s, these play clothes tended toward the flared and bell bottom silhouette. At the same time, new fabrics were used for products that had traditionally been made out of denim. The product line of Levi Strauss & Co. was no exception. Blue Levis were still a staple of the companys collection, but a glimpse at sales catalogs will reveal that customers also wanted plaid, polyester, no-wrinkle flares with matching vests. What looked almost like the end of simple, cotton denim as the fabric of everyday wear, was merely a ruin in denims proceed asc ension to global dominion. A snuggled look will show that denim never really disappeared.Even in the 1970s, when it seemed that denim was being pushed aside in favor of these other fabrics, writers, manufacturers, and marketing executives worked hard to keep denim in the general eye. A writer in the slip away 1970 issue of American Fabrics said, Indigo Blue Denimhas become a phenomenon without repeat in our times. To the youth of this country, and many other countries in this shrinking world, Indigo Blue Denim does not stand for utility. Its the worlds top manner fabric for pants. By the mid to late 1970s the craze for doubleknits and other like fabrics began to slow. At the same time, marketing reports in various trade magazines showed an upward pant in the popularity of denim, as seen in the number of denim-clad models in print and television advertising. Those who followed clothing trends into the late 1970s were quoted in the trade papers with comments such as, Jeans are m ore than a make.They are an established attitude about clothes and lifestyle. This attitude could be seen very clearly in the beautify denim craze which saw beaded, embroidered, multi-coloured and sequined jeans appearing on streets from California to New York and across the ocean. Personalizing ones jeans was such a huge trend in the United States that Levi Strauss & Co. sponsored a Denim Art Contest in 1973, inviting customers to send us slides of their decorated denim. The company received 2,000 entries from 49 of the United States, as well as Canada and the Bahamas. Judges included photographer Imogen Cunningham, designer Rudi Gernreich, the art critic for the San Francisco business relationship newspaper, and the Curator for San Franciscos De Young Museum.The lovable garments were sent on an 18month tour of American museums, and some of them were purchased by LS&CO. for the company Archives. In the Introduction to the catalog published to heed the museum tour, contest coo rdinators wrote that Levis jeans had become a canvas for personal expression. Personal expression found another medium in the 1980s with the designer jean craze of that decade. It seems you cant keep a good fabric down, no matter what form it takes. We all remember the ways in which denim was molded onto our bodies and the way that jeans were now worn almost anywhere, including places where they would have been completed banned in previous years (such as upscale restaurants).A writer for American Fabrics predicted this trend all the way back in 1969, when he wrote, What has happened to denim in the last decade is really a capsule of what happened to America. It has climbed the run of taste. Today, LS&CO. employees wear Levis jeans to work. Looking back, we see that the very first people to wear Levis jeans worked with pick and shovel, and though our tools are computer keyboard, PDA and cell phone, we have both been moved to wear the same thing each and every work day denim jeans. Bo rn in Europe, denims function and variable form found a perfect home in untamed America with the invention of jeans then, as now, denim makes our lives easier by making us comfortable and gives us a little bit of level every time we put it on.