by Kuan Chung Lu
If you happen to be in any crowded place on campus, look around and see what people are wearing. Jeans! 3 out of 5 people who have pants on are wearing jeans. You might not be surprised because you probably have them on, too. Aesthetic, durable, and comfortable, denim is certainly a fatal attraction. You may already have perfect taste and know exactly how good jeans look on you (if not you can browse the “Jeans” board on the BBS). But have you ever wondered when and where the trend in jeans began? How did it become such a fashion industry? And how powerful is the magic of jeans? American icon with an exotic birth Happy Birthday, Blue Jeans! May 20, 1873 is the official birthday of blue jeans, the date when patent no. 139,121 was granted. Born in San Francisco, blue jeans are often considered an American icon. However, in fact their origin is very multicultural. First of all the denim fabric was milled in Italy and then imported from Europe to the U.S. It replaced the canvas cloth that once was the material for miners’ pants. The most famous brand name, Levi’s, came from Levi Strauss, the inventor of American blue jeans, who was a German immigrant. He came to San Francisco in 1853 at the age of 24. What inspired him to create new pants was the fact that mine workers complained about the durability of their pants and how often they had to be repaired. He asked his tailor friend, Jacob Davis, who had immigrated from Riga, Latvia, to design a pair of overalls. In 1871, Mr. Davis, the first designer of jeans, placed copper rivets to secure the pockets, and these became one of the most important features of jeans design. Even the name “jeans” is borrowed from another language: from “Genoese,” an Italian sailor from Genoa who liked to dress in this thick blue fabric. Blue jeans may be an American icon because of their deep roots in American history, but actually they are a mixture of many exotic elements. Symbol of rebellion, symbol of youth, expression of democratic values At first, jeans were designed for California coal miners, but they soon became popular among other heavy workers. In the west, cowboys began to wear them, and women soon joined the trend, too. However, it was not until the 1960s that blue jeans became a mass market item. In the 1950s, rebellious high school students began to wear jeans to distinguish themselves from the older generation. At that time jeans were considered casual and were not allowed in schools. This trend grew further with the baby boomer generation, who were eager to show themselves as being against the establishment. Jeans can also express profoundly democratic values. As Charles A. Reich writes in The Greening of America, “there are no distinctions of wealth or status, no elitism; people confront one another shorn of these distinctions.” Sociologists also study jeans as an object of material culture, and they have found that denim is a garment accessible to everyone. It crosses boundaries of class, gender, age, ideology, and even religion. Workers, students, even the President of the United States wear jeans: at work, in school, on TV. Jeans have become identified with liberal thinking. Fashion week—you are in or out, but jeans are always in The phenomenon of designer jeans began in the 1970s. In 1980, a famous Calvin Klein ad showed Brooke Shields, then only 15, tossing her hair, looking into the camera, and saying: “Nothing comes between me and my Calvins.” This slogan was heard around the world and sold millions of pairs of jeans. The image of jeans became wild and sexy. Celebrities began to be photographed not in gowns but in ready-to-wear jeans. In 1988 the editor of Vogue magazine, Anna Wintour, made her cover in a pair of stonewash jeans teamed up with a bejeweled top. Jeans were now a regular feature of the cat walks, too, and jeans fever has seemed unstoppable ever since. Jeans are not just good looking and easy to wear, there are a lot of stories hidden within them! Some exotic linguistic origins: Denim: serge de Nîmes Jeans: Genoa, Italy (Gênes), Levi’s: Levi Strauss a
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The Taida Student Journal has been active since 1995 with an ever-changing roster of student journalists at NTU. Click the above link to read about the authors Archives
May 2024
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