Blue Jeans: A Style for Every Story

Carhartt Coverall (1950): Until a German chemist synthesized indigo in 1870, the colour in denim (and all other blue textiles) relied on the leaves of small shrubs predominantly from the genus Indigofera. Traditionally, cotton threads were immersed in a mixture of fermented foliage kept at blood temperature; when they were removed, the dye oxidized and turned the threads blue. Thriving cotton and indigo plantations were cultivated in India under the British Raj, and before that in the southern United States, where African field slaves developed the call-and-response precursor to “blues” music.

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Quilted Overalls (1960):

Shawty had them Apple Bottoms jeans (jeans)
Boots with the fur (with the fur)
The whole club lookin’ at her
She hit the floor (she hit the floor)
Next thing you know
Shawty got low low low low low low low low.

“Low,” Flo Rida, featuring T-Pain, 2007

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Jordache (1980): In February 1999, Italy’s Corte Suprema di Cassazione overturned the rape conviction of a driving instructor after concluding that his romp with an eighteen - year -old student must have been consensual because the girl was wearing jeans at the time. “It is impossible to take off jeans . . . without the active cooperation of the person wearing them,” the judges reasoned. In protest, women in the Italian parliament started wearing jeans to work. Legislators in Los Angeles followed suit, designating April 25 Denim Day in LA to raise awareness about sexual assault.

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Le Chateau (1990): Environmentalists have raised concerns about chemicals used in the production of synthetic dyes, cotton, and galvanized buttons. Moreover, a 2006 French study found that a year of machine washing, tumble drying, and ironing a pair of blue jeans twice a week uses 138 kilowatt hours of energy — as much as the per capita electricity consumption of Papua New Guinea in 1995. But jeans can be green, too. UltraTouch insulation uses denim offcuts collected from factories to make batts of toxin-free home insulation. And for a period of fifty years, until the turn of the millennium, each piece of paper money printed in America contained 20 to 30 percent recycled cotton from denim scraps.

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Imitation of Christ (2006): Levi Strauss & Co. called a 1918 version of its overalls “freedomalls.” To wit, when off-duty American GIs wore jeans in the streets of Europe during World War II the pants became a powerful symbol of the American dream. Behind the Iron Curtain, in late-’70s Hungary, a pair of American jeans could sell for 140 percent of the average worker’s income. “There is more power in rock music, videos, blue jeans, fast food, news networks and TV satellites than the entire Red Army,” mused French philosopher Régis Debray, five years before the Soviet Union collapsed. In Chinese, jeans translates as niuzaiku (“cowboy pants”).