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September
13, 2006:
Fascinating History Of Blue Jeans II
Interview
with James Sullivan, author of Jeans
|
Mike
Carruthers:
Do you know why denim pants are called jeans?
James Sullivan:
The word jeans comes from Genoa, Italy which was a major shipping
port in the middle ages and the French called the Genoans, "The
Gene" and one of the things that they made in Genoa was sort
of a precursor to denim material, which is known as jean cloth.
James Sullivan,
author of the book Jeans:
A Cultural History of an American Icon, says the most money
ever paid for a pair of jeans was $46, 532 paid by Levi Strauss
for a pair of miner's jeans from the 1880's, and it's interesting
how old jeans are often found.
The jeans will
be found in the mines of Nevada and the West. They were used
in a lot of cases when they started to wear out - they would
be used to fill cracks, to keep the mines intact. And excavators
have found fairly good examples of old jeans socked away in
the cracks of old mines.
And James says
John Wayne was one of the first people to stone-wash blue jeans
to make them soft and more comfortable.
Every time he
was going to go on a new film set, he would take his family
on a vacation beforehand and he would have his new pair of jeans
that he was going to wear on the film set. And his family in
a sort of a ritual, would bundle the jeans up with rocks, tie
them up and toss them off a pier in the Pacific Ocean and leave
them for a couple of days until the vacation was over with.
And then when he dragged them out, they had been broken down
and softened by the combination of the stone and the water.
At somethingyoushouldknow.net
I'm Mike Carruthers and that's Something You Should Know.
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