The Cultural Evolution of Jeans
“If you look over the years, the styles have changed - the clothes, the hair, the production, the approach to the songs. The icing to the cake has changed flavors. But if you really look at the cake itself, it's really the same.”
-John Oates
When the first jeans were introduced by Levi Strauss in 1873, they were considered a pair of work pants worn by miners of the California Gold Rush, yet jeans have evolved into an article of clothing found in nearly everyone's closet. Unlike other pants at the time, Strauss introduced metal rivets which were placed at points of strain increasing the durability of working cloths for generations to come. Following the mining error, jeans eventually took on their own subcultural aspects during recent decades. As dramatic cultural change occurred, jeans became a symbol of youth rebellion in the 1950s and therefore they were shunned by society. However, the practical application and desired appearance soon incorporated them back into society and the rapid expansion of their popularity grew worldwide. Today, jeans have been incorporated into the entire range of ages, race, and gender. While many characteristics of jeans still remain the same from the time period they were created, society’s constant cultural changes has renamed jeans as a whole.
Jeans have become universally one of the widely accepted articles of clothing, due to their practicality and desired appearance. However, before World War II jeans were only common in the American West because they were affiliated with “cowboys,” or uncivilized people. By the early 1950s, Hollywood began to associate jeans as a symbol of the American freedom. In the article “How Jeans Conquered the World” by Stephanie Hegarty, Robert Downey states that “Hollywood costume designers put all the bad boys in denim" and “If you were a 15-year-old boy in 1953 you wanted to be Marlon Brando.” Jeans provided individualism and were worn by many social classes, furthermore binding people from different social classes together. The wide range of interest in jeans, from both men and women, reconstructed the image of jeans, by making them an everyday piece of clothing. Another appeal jeans emphasized as a result of their construction, was their ability to express someone's personality by the abuse the jeans would have undergone, which further express one's unique identity. This natural form of individualism, furthermore initiated the production of a vast range of styles, cuts, and colors in the jean’s industry, by which ones character could be denounced by their clothing.
Today, different styles of jeans often cary closely affiliated titles with them. Thugs tend to wear baggy low hanging jeans, Skaters tend to wear skinny jeans, Hicks tend where boot cut jeans, Mainstream Girls tend to wear jeans with small tears or abrasions, and people who tend to be more expressive about their identity may were colorful jeans. Jeans continue to evolve, yet they continue to express styles and character from previous generations. Furthermore, the versatility of jeans allowed a single piece of clothing, fit the style preference and practicality of the world. Wearing denim blue jeans at the first summit meeting, George W Bush and Tony Blair states “We are regular guys; but of course they both looked like dorks.” Bush and Blair infer that no man shall be of a greater significance, by acknowledging that they are just two regular men. Furthermore, the versatility of jeans among different ethnic groups and social classes symbolizes the democratisation of the Wild West Americans.
Jeans are more than an article of clothing, they represent the expansion of American Culture. A once father spread out country began to bind together, resulting in a widely ranged ethnic diversity, united by a single nation. Jeans symbolize our lives from childhood to adulthood, from revolution to reformation. Just as Hetagry states, "It's not just a three-dimensional material, it's four-dimensional because it changes with time as well. The eternal appeal of jeans is just that they reflect us and they reflect the lives that we've had in them."