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September
12, 2006:
Fascinating History Of Blue Jeans
Interview
with James Sullivan, author of Jeans
|
Mike
Carruthers:
Blue jeans are about as all American as you can get, although
technically they didn't start here.
James Sullivan:
Denim work clothes actually began in Europe two or three hundred
years ago. What we consider today to be the modern blue jean originated
in 1873 with the Levi Strauss Company out of San Francisco. And
the distinction is that the mass-produced jeans that Levi's began
making have the copper rivets.
James Sullivan,
author of the book Jeans…
And the copper
rivets make the pants obviously more durable - they last longer
and at the time, that was done so that miners and other working
class people would have durable work clothes and the rivets
have since become part of the whole fashion ability of jeans
themselves.
What makes denim,
denim says James, is the threads going one way are dyed; the
threads going perpendicular to those are not, they're white.
But denim was for durability on the job - so how did they become
so fashionable? James says, the movies.
The earliest
cowboy heroes in the movies were sort of dandies. They wore
a lot of fringe and as western films grew up, the John Wayne's
and men of his era started wearing blue jeans that they felt
were a little more of an authentic cowboy look. And students
and young people in the 30's and 40's began wearing them in
part because they wanted to emulate their heroes from western
films and also, in part, that college students, for instance,
wanted to show solidarity with the working class.
Tomorrow, the
unusual way John Wayne treated his blue jeans - I'm Mike Carruthers
and that's Something You Should Know.
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