Jeans, or more commonly blue jeans, comprise the range of casual or work trousers made most often of indigo blue cotton denim with reinforced stitching at the seams and metal rivets placed at stress points. Though introduced as durable work clothing, jeans have become an almost universal part of modern culture, and are worn by people all over the world as both work and fashionable attire. Blue jeans, originally associated with the hard-working spirit of miners during the California Goldrush, were most directly descended from the "waist overalls" developed by Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis in 1873. Featured in American movie Westerns as early as the 1930s and 1940s, jeans began to attain cult status through their association with pop icons. Military servicemen during World War II wore jeans regularly while engaging in leisure activities, but it was their children growing up during the 1950s who embraced blue jeans as a symbol of their generation. Banned from many public schools, hard-to-get in stores outside of the United States, and worn by rebellious characters of movies of the 1950s, jeans became a symbol of power for the restless youth of the 1960s. Eventually jeans became popular worldwide through the influence of U.S. servicemen stationed overseas, through the popular influence of the cinema, and distribution of mass marketing media. Levi's blue jeans were first sold in Europe in 1959; by the end of the twentieth century denim blue jeans could be found invirtually every country on the globe. The manufacture of jeans had become a worldwide industry, supporting a wide variety of styles, colors, designers, fashions, and accessories, as the notion of jeans as a symbol of comfort, leisure, and youthful status replaced that of jeans as durable work wear.
Jean fabric, originally a tough, long-lasting, blended twill fabric, can be traced to twelfth century Genoa, Italy. The term "jeans" has been applied generally to describe the working man's outer wear in Europe since the seventeenth century. The modern blue jean, however, is most often manufactured not from jean fabric but from denim. The name "denim," from "serge de Nimes," refers to a finer grade serge fabric, also a twill, which appears to have originated in Nimes, France. Denim was originally a woven blend of wool and silk, but U.S. textile mills began using cotton as a substitute for the more expensive imported wools and linens and as a means of gaining independence from foreign suppliers as early as the mid-nineteenth century. The popular favor this trend gained resulted in the continuing use of cotton in both denim and jean fabrics. Denim tends to wear better, becoming softer with each successive wash, as opposed to jean fabric. One popular myth of the nineteenth century claimed that any worker who once wore denim would never go back to wearing jeans; at any rate denim fabric eventually became the preferred material for the manufacture of work jeans.
The modern connotation of jeans is usually of a line of denim trousers developed by dry goods manufacturer Levi Strauss in San Francisco in the 1870s. Popular myth ascribes Levi Strauss with the invention of blue jeans, imagined somewhat romantically as a figure rising to the occasion of hardship and innovation during the California Goldrush by the creation of much-needed overalls for miners using surplus tent canvas and surplus indigo for dye. In actuality, company archives of Levi Strauss & Co. attribute the invention of modern jeans to Jacob Davis, a Latvian tailor who immigrated to Reno, Nevada. According to company records, Davis invented a process whereby copper rivets were added to stress points in the seams which greatly enhanced their durability. Davis' overalls were an immediate success among the miners. Wanting to establish a patent for his process of rivetting overalls but not having the funds to do so, Davis reportedly approached Strauss, a successful dry goods merchant in San Francisco, and offered to share the proceeds with Strauss if he would put up the money for the patent. Strauss agreed, and a patent was issued in 1873. Trousers made using this process were known as "waist overalls" until 1960, when the common term "jeans" was inserted into Levi Strauss & Co. company advertising and literature.
Western stars of the 1940s and early 1950s such as John Wayne started the popular association of jeans with the hero myth of rugged individuals who braved harsh elements and savage attacks and helped build the American West. Later in the 1950s stars such as Marlon Brando and James Dean, portraying desperate men on the fringe of society gave jeans an association of rebelliousness. The clothing worn in these movies was espoused by impressionable youth as a symbol of the carefree lifestyle they wished to emulate. In truth, jeans had been commonly worn by U.S. military servicemen during World War II as leisure wear. After the war, veterans continued to wear jeans for recreation, and children born during this era naturally associated the wearing of blue jeans with leisure activities.
Jeans gained notoriety in American schools in part because of the popular association with rebelliousness, itself a derivation of simple leisure. Leisure wear was considered to give students the wrong impression of the importance of school activities throughout the 1950s and 1960s. In actuality, the original complaint against the wearing of waist overalls in schoolrooms seems to have stemmed from the fact that the copper rivets damaged wooden desks and chairs. Nonetheless, jeans were banned from many schools until as late as the early 1980s. The outlaw notion has only added to the popularity of wearing jeans among youth looking for status and peer acceptance.
Whatever the case, jeans gained notoriety and became a highly integrated symbol of the anti-establishment movement during the 1960s. This association has persisted through the end of the 1990s, when other popular youth forms including "gansta rap" music, skate-boarding, and baggy clothing have influenced the wearing of jeans by the incorporation of styles symbolizing yet another disenfranchised generation. In the 1960s, styles changed dramatically to accommodate the needs of wearers to associate with the societal fringe. Ironically, a pair of blue jeans became part of the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. in 1964. Jeans were elevated to the level of art in this era, as blue jeans were decorated, modified, painted, and displayed as one of the most defining American icons. The first jeans developed exclusively for women were introduced on the market in this decade. Later, during the 1980s, jeans fashions returned to the cultural mainstream with the advent of designer jeans, denim trousers distributed by famous designer labels such as Calvin Klein, Jordache, and Guess. Almost as a closure to the vast cycle of development of jeans fashions, a trend toward "vintage jeans" grew out of the 1990s, when many aging members of the original "blue jeans generation" sought to inculcate the earlier, uncomplicated days of leisure during their childhood. Also by the end of the twentieth century, corporations enforced increasingly relaxed standards of work attire, and instituted "casual days" and the "dress-down Friday" in the American workplace. Many workers choose to wear jeans on these days as an acceptable choice for casual work wear.
