Evolution of Jean-etic Code for Future Generations

It would be hard to find someone who doesn’t own a pair of jeans. For more than 140 years, they’ve been the true “people’s garment,” inexpensive enough for everyone to afford. In America, that is. The old Soviet Union forbade their import because they were considered clothing of the bourgeoisie.

In the Middle Ages, sailors from Genoa, Italy, were noted for their heavy cotton pants. In France, where tailors took the idea and created denim, the pants were called genes, the French word for Genoa, which developed into the American term jeans.

It was the legendary work of Levi Strauss, a Bavarian immigrant to San Francisco in the 1850s, that introduced jeans to America. Strauss initially bought massive bolts of canvas thinking he could make money selling it to gold miners for tents. But when he got to the fields, he noticed the torn pants worn by the miners and saw a need for sturdy work clothing.

His first jeans were made from brown canvas, and, although they weren’t as comfortable as today’s, they held up to hours in the dirt, mud and rocks.

Strauss then began importing French denim, which had a reputation as the toughest fabric in the world, and turned them into jeans. A tailor from Carson City, Nev., Jacob Davis, contacted Strauss with his idea about using copper rivets to strengthen the jeans’ pockets, which were often stretched to the limit by the nuggets a miner collected for the day. The shiny hardware was added, and jeans took off.

Other than softer fabric, today’s jeans haven’t changed much from the original design. The biggest differences are the colors available, from the traditional blue to green, white, red and even the wild shades of the ‘60s couture revival--pink, purple and tie-dyed psychedelic. And while they’re now associated more with fashion than factory work, they’re still the most common work clothing in the United States.