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.