In high cowboy blue jean splendor for Cheyenne Frontier Days circa 1958 or '59--Tim Murfin, next door neighbor Sharon Niddlekoff, Patrick, and cousin Linda Strom.. |
Like most American guys, I grew up
in my blue jeans, at least after my twin brother and me prevailed upon our mother not to make us go back to school in corduroy slacks and
suspenders for-christ-sakes. We had to have them. All of our favorite cowboys in the old two
reel westerns that played on TV every
afternoon wore them and so must
we. We rolled the bottoms up, which was
good for mom, because they gave us growing
room. A sturdy pair could last a
couple of years. When they inevitably wore out at the knees, Mom would repair them with iron-on
patches.
Mom was too cheap to pay for Levis
or Lee Riders. She generally stocked up on ours with store brands from J.C. Penney’s or Montgomery
Ward’s. Like real Levis, they were stiff and scratchy when new—chapped the hell out of my inner thighs when I walked. Mom liked that look and at first starched our
jeans to preserve it. Stopping
that was an epic battle all its
own. The dye in these off brands ran even
more than Levis. Our jockey shorts were the same color of
blue as an old church lady’s hair
for the first few wearings. Eventually,
however the jeans settled down to soft
comfort and a far lighter hue. Neither of the high schools I attended allowed jeans at school. But I was out of slacks as soon as possible after school and on weekends. They were all I took to college, except for one pair of slacks for chapel services and faculty
dinners.
From then on, it was all about the jeans. I will even admit to a pair or two of elephant
bells, then flairs and boot cuts before going back to old straight leg jeans like I wore in
school. But now I could buy them by
length as well as waist so no more roll-ups.
I settled into a daily uniform of jeans and a chambray work shirt, denim pearl
snap, or plaid flannel depending
on the season. So did a lot of other
guys. By the time I was in my mid-40’s I had teen-age daughters who were all about designer jeans. I remember
the near heart-attack the first time
Carolynne demanded a pair Jordache jeans that cost more than I
made in a day. I grew even more perplexed and outraged when first stone
wash, then acid wash, and
finally pre-worn complete with rips and tears became teen must-haves.
At an IWW CTA fair hike picket in Chicago in 1970--boot cut jeans and a fringed leather hippie sash for flare. |
It was all about denim in the ’80’s. But fashion was also pressing prices of my work-a-day attire of choice up. Wranglers,
the least expensive of the big three brands got to $40 a pair and house brands
only $5 or so less. To keep my daughters
fashionable, I sank to the cheapest jeans of all—no-names from discount
houses. The dye wasn’t really denim
blue, it was a sort of purple and
the stitching was in white thread instead of gold or
blue. They tended to fall apart after
two or three washings, so the $5 investment in a pair was not worth it.
I swallowed hard and began paying
the damn $40. But not for long, my body was changing—and not for the better.
Jeans made for 20 year olds didn’t fit right anymore and even relaxed fits or embarrassing pairs with
elastic waist bands did not entirely
solve the problem which was caused by the combination of my expanding waistline, lack
of ass, and short, stubby legs. My funny looking body made up its 6’2” height
in a freakishly long torso. I started wearing pants out not in the knees,
but along the seams of the crotch where the material began to pull
apart after just a few washings. After
my last pair of $40 jeans bit the dust in this way after only a dozen or so launderings, I had enough.
I gave up my beloved jeans, which
were as much a part of my identity and image as my cowboy hats. But khaki slacks were $15 a pair
if you took a pass on Dockers and
bought the house brands at Wards or K-Mart. And they were versatile. They were fine for everyday wear with just a buttoned
sport shirt. Throw on a dress shirt, tie, and sport coat and
they were fine for almost all business
and dress up occasions short of a wedding or a funeral.
The khaki years--walking with the Democrats in the 2015 Crystal Lake Independence Day parade. |
For my work as a school custodian I got blue work pants to go with my uniform shirts. The same worked when I began working
second jobs as a as a gas
station/convenience store clerk. When
I had the part-time job as maintenance at
a local mall, I had similar brown twill pants for my tan shirts.
But most of the time it has been khakis
for many years, a choice made by a
lot of other duffers and men who just
don’t give a damn anymore. I never had
to match my pants with my shirt or
jacket. Didn’t have to even think about
them. Just pulled ‘em from the closet
and put ‘em on until the cuffs frayed
or I stained them with some kind of food or drink catastrophe. Even then they were good a while longer to mow the lawn in or do other dirty work that I couldn’t shirk or avoid.
I got older yet and began to see men my age still in their jeans. A lot of them looked good. They looked comfortable. Some, the guys with big bellies like mine hanging
over the belt and pushing the jeans down past the ass crack, looked
ridiculous. But not as ridiculous as
the guys in sweats, cargo pants, and most shorts.
I may have been square,
but at least I had my dignity. Or so I told myself.
Then about three years ago I found
some house brand jeans that looked durable for about what I was paying for my
khakis. I bought a pair on a whim. They were roomier than what I wore in my younger days but skinny jeans are just for young dudes and hipsters. The pants were
comfortable. I bought another pair and
then another.
The Old Man back in jeans in the fall of 2018. |
After I retired from my day job they
were about all I wore except to church on
Sundays then after a while decided that a sport coat and jeans were as
acceptable as a jacket, tie, and khakis.
Since the Coronavirus lock down,
I haven’t worn anything else. But that
still makes me more formal than the
many guys my age I know who haven’t been out of sweats or shorts.
All of this is a useless, rambling introduction to the true
topic—the official birthday of blue
jeans as we know them. On May 20, 1873 Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis obtained a patent
on a new style of rugged and durable work pants.
Levi Strauss about the time he was establishing himself in San Francisco. |
Strauss was born to an Ashkenazi Jewish family in Buttenheim, Germany on February 26, 1829.
When he was 16 he accompanied his mother
and two sisters to the United States to join two brothers who had an established J. Strauss Brother & Co a
successful wholesale dry goods business
in New York City. Young Levi moved quickly to Louisville, Kentucky where he dealt in
his brother’s dry goods.
After the Gold Rush of 1849 Levi was selected by the family to open up operations in bustling San Francisco where one sister was
already in residence. He arrived by ship from New York in 1853 with a load
of goods from his brothers and set up an emporium
he called Levi Strauss & Company. He resisted the impulse of other would-be
merchants to go to the gold fields
to find riches in the mines, a decision that ruined most of them. Instead he was content to collect the gold from the miners by
supplying them with hard-to-get-dry goods at steep prices. With the added cost of transportation by ship and merchandise of all types scarce, Strauss was able to charge all
that the market would bear and still
thrive.
His well-established business outlasted the Gold Rush and was soon
supplying goods to far flung corners of
the rapidly developing West. A big demand
was always for durable trousers
that could hold up under the rugged
conditions of placer and hard rock mining. In 1872 a major customer for Straus’s fabric, a tailor named Jacob Davis
approached Levi with an idea to reinforce
pockets and other points of stress
like the bottom of the fly with copper rivets. The pair entered
business together and obtained their patent for “Improvement in Fastening Pocket-Opening.” They called their product waist overalls, because they eliminated the bib common on a lot of work pants.
Hard working miners seldom looked this neat in Levi's product as in this advertisement . Note denim blouse--the ancestor of today's popular jean jackets. |
Legend
has it that the first pants were
made from coarse brown duck fabric. And some early pairs were made this way. But the company soon found denim, by tradition dyed blue, was far more durable and was
marketing most pairs in that fabric within the first year. In an early example of trademark branding, the company began to affix a leather tag to the back of the waist band with an illustration of two mules trying to pull a pair of trousers apart. The illustration of strength helped sell the
product, which was ubiquitous among
miners and other hard working outdoor
laborers in the West by the turn of the 20th Century.
Levi Strauss' trademark and label advertised the rugged strength of the pants. |
Some folk believe that Strauss
introduced denim to the States, importing his fabric from Nimes, France where it had been produced for centuries. But Strauss bought his denim from well-established
American weavers and dyers who had been producing the cloth
for decades for use in overalls and dungarees.
Many fabrics were commonly used for
work pants—home spun, coarse woolens, and Irish laborers introduced mole
skin. Dungarees were among the most
common. They were originally made from Dungi, a durable and heavy cotton fabric originally used as sail cloth and imported by the English from India. Like European denim
or jeans, the cloth was commonly
dyed with indigo.
As early as the Revolutionary War George
Washington specified blue died dungarees as the field uniform of artillerymen
who often had to do hard labor moving heavy cannon over muddy ground.
The Master of the Blue Jeans portrayed this beggar boy in a tattered jean jacket circa 1600. |
Dungi was similar to, but not
identical with denim and jeans, two fabrics which originated in Renaissance Europe. Jeans were originated in Genoa, Italy in the 17th
Century. The material was a kind of fine wale cotton corduroy which was
died blue and became in inexpensive
fabric widely used in work garments of the poor. An unknown
artist now known simply as the Master
of the Blue Jeans left 14 exquisite
painting of poor people in the easily
recognized fabric.
Soon another fabric center, Nimes, was trying to duplicate the cloth that they named
after the French pronunciation of Genoa—GĂȘnes. The fabric of Nimes was not identical to the
original. It was coarser and heavier,
although nearly identical in color.
Because it was heavier it was popular in work smocks and jackets, and was also used as a cover for merchandise lashed to the decks of sailing ships. Their fabric
became known as d’Nimes—literally of
Nimes—or denim.
By the early 19 both fabrics were circulating in world trade and manufactures
in Britain and the United States began to copy them. The names jeans and denim became interchangeable.
Early American work pants were very loose fitting often held up by one incorporated diagonal strap running from the waist on one side to the
opposite shoulder or were bib style.
When no strap or bib was present they were held up by suspenders. Sailors often wore light cotton pants held up by rope
belts. But belts were uncommon in most men’s pants.
When Levi introduced belt loops to some models of their
jeans around the turn of the 20th Century, the pants quickly gained wide acceptance with another group of rugged
outdoor workers—cowboys—who found
that suspenders often snagged on brush or gear. Range photos show that the adoption spread quickly.
Real cowboys were used in many of
the early two reel western movies and so were blue jeans, rolled up at the
bottom to display highly tooled Texas styled boots. Little boys and little girls across the
country saw and wanted the same look.
Soon Levis and other jean companies had a whole new market. But school officials, Churches, and places like theaters
often found jeans unacceptably informal
and they were banned from those places routinely. Which helped give the pants the extra allure of forbidden fruit.
Jeans also spread slowly east as
they were adopted by more and more factory and construction workers.
Hundreds of thousands of men first encountered them in Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camps during the Great Depression. During World War II the Army issued
loose fitting dungarees as fatigues for
stateside duty. Navy enlisted men eschewed traditional white bell bottoms for a tighter
fitting style of jeans for everyday work and battle wear aboard ship. And women
flocking to the Defense Plants got
their own jeans—usually buttoning up the
side instead of the front.
It turned out that James Dean's jeans made a more enduring fashion statement than his red jacket in Rebel Without a Cause. |
After the war both sexes took to
wearing jeans as weekend wear or for
chores like gardening. When James
Dean wore a pair in Rebel Without a Cause, they became
the instant uniform of rebellious youth. Marilyn
Monroe did the same thing for tight
fitting, shape enhancing jeans for women in The River of No Return.
In 1973 Levis revolutionized the jeans business by introducing their 501 jeans which were preshrunk. It was now possible to buy jeans close to the
size you could actually wear—being made of cotton there was still some,
although much less, shrinkage. That also
meant you could by jeans the right
length. Good bye rolled up pant
legs. Other manufactures followed. Jeans also generally replaced the traditional fly
buttons with heavy duty copper Zippers.
The continuing fashion for tattered and pre-ripped jeans remains a profound mystery to the Old Man. |
The first pre-washed jeans and decorated jeans were introduced by retailers in New York City in the mid ‘60’s inevitably leading to the era of designer jeans.
Today even though their peak
popularity in the 1980’s has passed, jeans are still probably the most common leisure and work wear in the United States. Most people own three or more pair at any
time. And the look has been just as
popular in France where the fabric originated and where nearly as many jeans
are now sold annually as in the United States.
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