On average, Europeans buy one and a half pairs of jeans a year, while Americans - four. Jeans have gone from rough workwear to the staple of a fashionable wardrobe, and age only adorns them. Close acquaintance with the denim theme.
Jeans are both a cult object (among people who call themselves denim heads and refuse to wash them) and a massive demand. People treat these modest pants in a special way. “It's very personal, because every jeans is colored differently … As you wear them, they seem to acquire their own personality - with a pattern of wear that is characteristic of you personally. As time passes, jeans fit your figure and become unique,”says Kara Nicholas. She works for Cone Denim, one of the historic denim manufacturers.
Cone Denim's White Oak factory in Greensboro, North Carolina celebrated its 110th anniversary on April 20. All of the brand's aged jeans are made here, and a collection of American Draper X3 model shuttle looms from the 1940s can be found here.
Nicholas' passion for authentic denim began in the 1980s. “Then people started collecting vintage jeans, and the idea arose to imitate or recreate the original designs. We took turn-of-the-century jeans as our reference and experimented with raw materials as well as different paint formulations,”she explains.
Since the second half of the 20th century, jeans have become firmly established in the fashionable wardrobe - from navy blue rolled-up trousers in rockabilly style to bell bottoms and timeless skinny (it is believed that the fashion for them was introduced by French designer Edie Slimane in the early 2000s, as the main designer Dior Homme). However, the origin of jeans is purely utilitarian.
One of the creators of blue jeans, which appeared in 1873 in the wake of the California gold rush - a couple of decades later than its heyday, is considered Levi Strauss. The Levi’s website tells the story of Strauss, a Bavarian who moved from New York to San Francisco in 1853 to sell wholesale fabrics and haberdashery. His client, tailor Jacob Davis, was looking for a business partner to patent the trousers with rivets at the highest tension points, which would last longer. A patent for riveted men's work trousers was granted to Jacob Davis in partnership with Levi Strauss & Company on May 20, 1873. This day is considered the date of the birth of blue jeans and a new category of workwear.
According to Levi’s, the first blue jeans - originally called XX “waist-length jumpsuit” - had one back pocket with bow stitching, a watch pocket, a strap, buttons for suspenders and a brass rivet between the legs.
Choosing blue jeans
It is claimed that the main material for their production - denim - comes from the French city of Nîmes. Its name is the American-style phrase Serge de Nîmes (that is, the twill from Nimes). Denim is characterized by the interweaving of indigo-colored warp threads with undyed weft (padded) threads. This durable cotton twill weave was used in the 19th century to make trousers worn by sailors from Genoa, Italy. There is an opinion that these trousers were the predecessors of jeans, and the word "jeans" is supposedly derived from the French name of Genoa - Gênes.
Wide leg
The slogan chosen was “Studded workwear made of real blue denim”. As a distinctive sign - Levi's leather rectangle "Two Horses", which appeared in 1886. It features jeans stretched between two workhorses as a symbol of strength. In 1890, the XX model, which later became the uniform of horse herders in the Wild West, was assigned batch number 501. The version with two back pockets appeared in 1901, and belt loops were added in 1922. In 1936, a red tag was sewn onto the right back pocket of his trousers: Levi’s claims it was needed to “distinguish Levi’s overalls from competitors that used dark denim and bow stitching.”
Hollywood Westerns piqued audiences' interest in cowboys, and blue jeans became the clothing of the masses in the 1930s, and then entered the youth culture of the 1950s under the influence of Hollywood denim rebellions like James Dean. It is believed that teens began using the word "jeans" in the same decade, but it was not until 1960 that Levi's changed the term "overalls" to "jeans" in advertisements and on packaging.
The first TV commercial for Levi's jeans aired in 1966, and the women's model 501, which was washed to fit, appeared in 1981. The legendary Travis advertisement was shot for her (this name is pronounced by the heroine at the end of the video).
A new turn has taken place in the modern history of jeans: Japanese denim has become a cult - with an uncut hem, the so-called "selvedge". It is made on traditional shuttle-type machines: the result is a narrow strip of fabric, from which you do not need to cut the edge and process it with an overlock. The material is 100% cotton, the dyeing is done exclusively with natural indigo dye. American manufacturers abandoned such machines in favor of cheaper "wide-beam" production.
The publication
The pragmatic roots of denim were due to its durability and longevity, and the appearance of fundamentally new stretching fibers paved the way for jeans in a fashionable wardrobe. The peak came in the 2000s - the era of jeggings (a hybrid of jeans and leggings). The invention of synthetic fibers called "spandex" expanded the range of possibilities, agrees Kara Nicholas of Cone Denim. The use of sustainable and high-tech fibers also played a role, she said, in an attempt to make fashion functional.
Cone Denim is partnering with fiber and yarn manufacturers such as Invista to drive these innovations. A recent example is a collaboration with Unifi, whose Repreve technology (fiber from recycled plastic bottles) was used to create the Cone Touch material. “They use a special spinning method: it feels and looks like cotton yarn, but this material is in no way inferior in strength and other qualities to synthetic fibers,” says Nicholas. "The idea is that all the green and high-tech innovations don't stop jeans from looking and wearing like they were made of cotton denim."
Jeanologia, an industrial laser company in Valencia, Spain, was one of the first to use environmentally friendly technology to create a worn-out jeans look and finish, one of the most environmentally damaging operations in the textile industry. The company's products are marketed as "real denim, which only takes a couple of hours to produce."
“They say jeans have a soul and they become a part of us - after all, everyone wears their jeans in their own way. When we go to a denim store, we subconsciously look for an analogue of our old favorite pair of jeans,”says Enrique Silla, Director of Jeanologia. He believes that the current textile industry uses "prehistoric" methods when it comes to the use of water and chemicals. According to Sigli, such inventions can breathe new life into an industry in need of reform. He claims that 20% of denim makers are already using his company's technology.
More than five billion jeans are produced annually: on average, Europeans buy one and a half pairs of jeans a year, and Americans - four, and soon “the average inhabitant of the Earth will have a pair of jeans a year,” says Enrique Silla. Back to the future - this is the slogan of the denim industry: the very first blue jeans remain the source of inspiration for it.
