Blue Jeans †American Cultural Artifact Essay

sacrilegious jeans in the last thirty years have bring home the bacon such(prenominal) world wide popularity that they have come to be considered an American icon. However jeans have not always been held in high stead, merely rather have had a troubled account statement including its beginnings within the flowings set movement, being considered unsavory by religious leaders and besides seen as a rebellious statement about western degeneration. According to the University of Toronto, no other garment has served as an example of consideration ambivalence and ambiguity than blue jeans in the history of fashion.Throughout this undertake I will discuss how jeans have become such a common treasured and even expensive item crossing oer class, gender, age, regional, and national lines as reflected by the many changing political views and sufferance from various social classes oer the past 50 years. muniment of Blue Jeans According to the University of Toronto, blue jeans were or iginally created for the California coal miners in the mid-nineteenth atomic number 6 by the Morris Levi Strauss, a Bavarian immigrant who relocated to New York in 1847.Mr Strauss comp unitarynt and the history of garment changed forever when in 1872 he acquire an tornado from Jacob Davis, a tailor from Reno Nevada. Mr. Davis, in order to improve the durability of the shorts that he made for his clients, had been adding metal rivets to the highly stressed seams. The idea was in(predicate) and he wished to patent it, tho due to financial constraints required a partner and hence Levi became the financial backer and partner.In 1873, the new partners received a patent for an improvement in Fastening Pocket-Openings, and thus the history of blue jeans as we k immediately them began. Blue jeans were originally called waistline overalls by Levi Strauss and Co and in the 1920s these were the most widely used proletarians pants in America. The name of these trousers changed to jean s in the 1960s when Levi Strauss and Co. recognize that this was what the product was being called by the late, hip teenage boys.The history of waist overalls continues as the history of blue jeans. Jeans is now generally understood to hint to pants made out of a specific type of material called denim (Fashion Encyclopedia). Blue Jeans through the decades The popularity of blue jeans spread among working people, such as farmers and the ranchers of the American West. According to the Encyclopedia of Fashion, in the 1930s jeans became so popular among cowboys that Wrangler formed just to make denim work clothing for those who rode the range.Jeans have tended to follow along in popularity with popular shade as evident with the popular Western films which found adventure and comminute in the adventures of the cowboys who rode horses, shot bad guys, and wore blue jeans. Those who wished to imitate the casual, rugged realize of the cowboys they saw in films began to wear jeans as c asual wear (Fashion Encyclopedia). This number is not heavy(a) to understand, as even today fashion trends are greatly influenced by what highly publicized celebrities choose to wear.During World warfare II blue jeans became part of the official coherent of the Navy and brim Guard, and became even more popular when worn as off-duty leisure clothing by many other soldiers. In his book, Jeans A Cultural History of an American Icon, James Sullivan states that the rise of the popularity of jeans after the WWII can greatly be attributed to the influence of the film and music industry, during the 1950s many young people began to wear jeans when they saw them on rebellious young American film stars such as Marlon Brando and James Dean.By 1950, Levis began merchandising nationally and other brands started emerging, such as Lee Coopers and each with its protest particular fit (Sullivan 287). According to the University of Toronto, in the 1960s and 1970s jeans were embraced by the nonco nformist hippie youth movement, and the history of blue jeans even gets think to the downfall of communism. Behind the iron curtain, jeans became a symbol of western retrogression and individuality and as such were highly sought. Jeans had become extremely popular, but were still mainly worn by working people or the young.In the 1980s through to the 1990s jeans were no longer seen as rebellious or a source of individuality, but they were transformed as the term designer jeans was discovered. Many designers such as Jordache and Calvin Klein came on circuit board to create expensive jeans and some jeans even reached haute couture status (Fashion Encyclopedia). In the new millennium denim is seen on designer catwalks and there are now hundreds of styles, types and labels available and of various price ranges. Changing PopularityAccording to Peter Beagle in his book American Denim A New Folk blind, the popularity of jeans can be attributed to the fact that jeans can be seen to embrac e the American democratic values of independence, freedom and equality. Some Americans even consider jeans to be the national uniform. Blue jeans have evolved from a garment associated exclusively with hard work to one associated with leisure. What began as work clothes has transformed into one of the hottest items available on the consumer market today.What was at a time apparel associated with low horticulture has undergone a reversal in status. Blue jeans were the first to accomplish a rather revolutionary cultural achievement bringing upper class status to a lower class garment. Conclusion At one point or another throughout history, blue jeans have been the uniform of many groups and are considered the one garment of clothing that has remained hip for over a century and has survived every(prenominal)thing from World War II to the eighties.For half a century blue jeans have helped define every youth movement, and every effort of older generations to deny the passing of youth. Fifty years agone America invented the concept of teenager, and it is probably no coincidence that the enduring shell of blue jeans, claiming independence and the right to self-expression, can be traced to the same time. Jeans were once seen as clothing for minority groups such as workers, hippies or rebellious youth, but are now embraced by the dominant American culture as a whole.