经济学人2016年3月26日The meaning of blue jeans

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Lexington
The meaning of blue jeans
Denim’s history suggests that American attitudes to work are more
complex than they seem

Mar 26th 2016 | From the print edition

IN AN interview near the end of his career the fashion designer Yves Saint
Laurent confessed to a regret: that he had not invented blue jeans. “They have
expression, modesty, sex appeal, simplicity,” sighed the owlish Frenchman. “All I
hope for in my clothes.” American denim-lovers might add other attributes. As
far back as the 1930s, when the popularity of cowboy films helped jeans make
the leap from workwear into the wardrobes of Hollywood stars, denim has been
understood to stand for something larger about the American spirit: for rugged
individualism, informality and a classless respect for hard work.
“Deep down in every American’s breast…is a longing for the frontier,” enthused
Vogue magazine in 1935, advising readers on how to dress with true “Western
chic” (combine jeans with a Stetson hat and “a great free air of Bravado,” it
counselled). Levi Strauss & Co., the San Francisco firm which invented modern
blue jeans in 1873, saw sales boom after it crafted posters showing denim-clad
cowboys toting saddles and kissing cowgirls.



Jump to the 1950s and 1960s, and American consumers learned the heroic
history of denim from nationwide magazine and television advertising
campaigns. They were told that the tough blue cloth began life as “Serge de
Nîmes”, in the French town of that name, and was used by Columbus for his
ships’ sails, before outfitting the pioneers who tamed the West. In a country so
often riven by culture wars, jeans crossed lines of ideology, class, gender and
race. Presidents from Jimmy Carter onwards have worn denim when fishing,
clearing brush or playing sports to signal their everyman credentials—though
Barack Obama has endured mockery for donning capacious jeans that he later
conceded were “a little frumpy”.
Since the second world war, when GIs and sailors took blue jeans to the Old
World and Asia, denim has carried ideas of American liberty around the globe,
often leaving governments scrambling to catch up. Emma McClendon, a curator
at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in New York, notes in a fine new
book, “Denim: Fashion’s Frontier”, that when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989,
reporters were surprised to see young East Berliners dressed exactly like their
cousins from the West—in stonewashed jeans. Ms McClendon’s book
accompanies a small but splendid exhibition on denim at the FIT on Seventh
Avenue.
The popularity of clothing invented to survive hard labour is of topical interest in
America, a country gripped by election-year debates about blue-collar,
working-class voters, and whether their interests have been ignored by ruling
elites. Ms McClendon argues, persuasively, that much of what Americans think
they know about denim draws on a set of “origin myths”, crafted and
disseminated by manufacturers over many years, both individually and in
campaigns run by the Denim Council, an industry group of clothing- makers and
textile mills that was active from 1955-75. The council, whose papers are now in
the FIT’s archives, was formed after jeans- clad motorcycle gangs and such films
as “The Wild One” and “Rebel Without a Cause” led to something like a
nationwide panic about denim and its unseemly effects on young bodies and
minds. Committees of denim manufacturers and advertising executives set out to
combat “anxieties over juvenile delinquency”. Wholesome films about jeans
appeared on over 70 television stations, and “How It All Began” cartoons ran in
newspapers, tracing the origins of denim back to medieval Europe. From the late
1950s Levi Strauss & Co. ran advertisements and a letter-writing campaign
urging schools to allow students to attend classes in denim. Their pitch combined
images of clean-cut, studious children in jeans with such slogans as “Right for
School”, explains Tracey Panek, Levi’s company historian.
Quite a lot of this marketing was hokum, or close to it. There is no evidence that
Columbus crossed oceans under billowing denim sails, while the latest research



is that the term “denim” may have been invented in England. Perhaps most
strikingly, relatively few cowboys wore blue jeans at the height of the Wild West,
Ms McClendon says: canvas and leather trousers were also common. Denim was
mostly worn by small farmers, field-hands, labourers and miners—some of the
oldest pieces in the archives of Levi Strauss & Co. were found in disused mines in
California and Nevada (there is a whole world of denim-hunters out there,
willing to endure much hardship to find a pair of 1880s Levi’s).
The best history money can buy
Ms McClendon describes economic and commercial forces at work in the 1930s.
Denim sales to working- class customers slumped during the Depression. At the
same time ranchers in need of extra income touted their properties as “dude
ranches” at which affluent tourists could play at cowboys, apeing favourite film
stars. Even Depression- era protectionism arguably played a role: Sandra
Comstock, a sociologist at Reed College in Oregon, has written that tariffs on
imported French clothing prodded department stores to promote domestic
fashions including jeans.
Myth-making about jeans suggests a political conclusion, too: that for a
supposedly classless country America takes a complicated view of work. Study
denim’s history and it is hard to avoid concluding that heroic individuals
roaming the land, such as cowboys, are easier to sell as fashion icons than folk
who toil by the hour in a factory, garage or field, taking orders from a boss. The
first gallery at the FIT exhibition shows how the earliest denim clothes were
often uniforms: it includes a prison uniform, sailor’s overalls and, most tellingly,
the sort of blue work-shirt made of chambray (a cousin of denim) that inspired
the term “blue-collar worker” back in the 1920s. Yet, other than to a few urban
hipsters in recent decades, chambray shirts have mostly lacked the “cross-over
cool” of denim jeans, says Fred Dennis, senior curator at the FIT—they did not fit
into a “romanticised, cool-dude weekend look”. Small wonder that blue-collar
workers feel forgotten.



Lexington
The meaning of blue jeans
Denim’s history suggests that American attitudes to work are more
complex than they seem

Mar 26th 2016 | From the print edition

IN AN interview near the end of his career the fashion designer Yves Saint
Laurent confessed to a regret: that he had not invented blue jeans. “They have
expression, modesty, sex appeal, simplicity,” sighed the owlish Frenchman. “All I
hope for in my clothes.” American denim-lovers might add other attributes. As
far back as the 1930s, when the popularity of cowboy films helped jeans make
the leap from workwear into the wardrobes of Hollywood stars, denim has been
understood to stand for something larger about the American spirit: for rugged
individualism, informality and a classless respect for hard work.
“Deep down in every American’s breast…is a longing for the frontier,” enthused
Vogue magazine in 1935, advising readers on how to dress with true “Western
chic” (combine jeans with a Stetson hat and “a great free air of Bravado,” it
counselled). Levi Strauss & Co., the San Francisco firm which invented modern
blue jeans in 1873, saw sales boom after it crafted posters showing denim-clad
cowboys toting saddles and kissing cowgirls.



Jump to the 1950s and 1960s, and American consumers learned the heroic
history of denim from nationwide magazine and television advertising
campaigns. They were told that the tough blue cloth began life as “Serge de
Nîmes”, in the French town of that name, and was used by Columbus for his
ships’ sails, before outfitting the pioneers who tamed the West. In a country so
often riven by culture wars, jeans crossed lines of ideology, class, gender and
race. Presidents from Jimmy Carter onwards have worn denim when fishing,
clearing brush or playing sports to signal their everyman credentials—though
Barack Obama has endured mockery for donning capacious jeans that he later
conceded were “a little frumpy”.
Since the second world war, when GIs and sailors took blue jeans to the Old
World and Asia, denim has carried ideas of American liberty around the globe,
often leaving governments scrambling to catch up. Emma McClendon, a curator
at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in New York, notes in a fine new
book, “Denim: Fashion’s Frontier”, that when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989,
reporters were surprised to see young East Berliners dressed exactly like their
cousins from the West—in stonewashed jeans. Ms McClendon’s book
accompanies a small but splendid exhibition on denim at the FIT on Seventh
Avenue.
The popularity of clothing invented to survive hard labour is of topical interest in
America, a country gripped by election-year debates about blue-collar,
working-class voters, and whether their interests have been ignored by ruling
elites. Ms McClendon argues, persuasively, that much of what Americans think
they know about denim draws on a set of “origin myths”, crafted and
disseminated by manufacturers over many years, both individually and in
campaigns run by the Denim Council, an industry group of clothing- makers and
textile mills that was active from 1955-75. The council, whose papers are now in
the FIT’s archives, was formed after jeans- clad motorcycle gangs and such films
as “The Wild One” and “Rebel Without a Cause” led to something like a
nationwide panic about denim and its unseemly effects on young bodies and
minds. Committees of denim manufacturers and advertising executives set out to
combat “anxieties over juvenile delinquency”. Wholesome films about jeans
appeared on over 70 television stations, and “How It All Began” cartoons ran in
newspapers, tracing the origins of denim back to medieval Europe. From the late
1950s Levi Strauss & Co. ran advertisements and a letter-writing campaign
urging schools to allow students to attend classes in denim. Their pitch combined
images of clean-cut, studious children in jeans with such slogans as “Right for
School”, explains Tracey Panek, Levi’s company historian.
Quite a lot of this marketing was hokum, or close to it. There is no evidence that
Columbus crossed oceans under billowing denim sails, while the latest research



is that the term “denim” may have been invented in England. Perhaps most
strikingly, relatively few cowboys wore blue jeans at the height of the Wild West,
Ms McClendon says: canvas and leather trousers were also common. Denim was
mostly worn by small farmers, field-hands, labourers and miners—some of the
oldest pieces in the archives of Levi Strauss & Co. were found in disused mines in
California and Nevada (there is a whole world of denim-hunters out there,
willing to endure much hardship to find a pair of 1880s Levi’s).
The best history money can buy
Ms McClendon describes economic and commercial forces at work in the 1930s.
Denim sales to working- class customers slumped during the Depression. At the
same time ranchers in need of extra income touted their properties as “dude
ranches” at which affluent tourists could play at cowboys, apeing favourite film
stars. Even Depression- era protectionism arguably played a role: Sandra
Comstock, a sociologist at Reed College in Oregon, has written that tariffs on
imported French clothing prodded department stores to promote domestic
fashions including jeans.
Myth-making about jeans suggests a political conclusion, too: that for a
supposedly classless country America takes a complicated view of work. Study
denim’s history and it is hard to avoid concluding that heroic individuals
roaming the land, such as cowboys, are easier to sell as fashion icons than folk
who toil by the hour in a factory, garage or field, taking orders from a boss. The
first gallery at the FIT exhibition shows how the earliest denim clothes were
often uniforms: it includes a prison uniform, sailor’s overalls and, most tellingly,
the sort of blue work-shirt made of chambray (a cousin of denim) that inspired
the term “blue-collar worker” back in the 1920s. Yet, other than to a few urban
hipsters in recent decades, chambray shirts have mostly lacked the “cross-over
cool” of denim jeans, says Fred Dennis, senior curator at the FIT—they did not fit
into a “romanticised, cool-dude weekend look”. Small wonder that blue-collar
workers feel forgotten.

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