The Great Denim War
The Great Denim War
Written by Olivia Flanz
Photographed by Olivia Flanz
The world is obsessing over denim…again! Some may say this is a trend, others say maybe we never left the denim craze. Jeans are a staple in our wardrobes, but it was a long road to get to the popularity of jeans today.
So let’s go back. The word itself stems from Genoa, Italy, where the textile “jean” or “Gênes,” the French word for Genoa, was produced throughout the 16th century. This fabric would eventually be dyed blue and popularized by dry goods merchant Levi Strauss and tailor Jacob Davis, forming Levi Strauss & Co., which we can still buy from today.
In 1871, the wife of a local laborer asked Jacob to make work pants that wouldn’t fall apart. He decided to put rivets—those small metal studs on the pocket areas of your jeans—on men's work pants for the first time. Though rivets are now mostly decorative, they were initially Davis' solution to a lack of stability in weaker areas of the pants, like the pocket region.
At the time, jeans were used solely for workwear, popular among farmers and miners during the California Gold Rush. So how did jeans go from workwear to the staple that is in everyone's closet? A lot of it can be attributed to Hollywood, where Westerns glamorized rugged cowboy heroes—a legacy still echoed in today’s advertising. In the ‘50s and ‘60s, celebrities associated with style and rebellion also popularized the jeans. In River of No Return, Marilyn Monroe wore dark high-waisted jeans, a white cotton shirt, and a belt, and in Jailhouse Rock, Elvis Presley wore a Canadian tuxedo with a striped undershirt.
Trending again, the denim-on-denim was born from a “rebellion.” In 1951, singer Bing Crosby was denied entry to a Vancouver hotel because he was wearing all denim. When the company Levi Strauss & Co. heard about the drama, they gifted him a full-on denim tuxedo, and hence, the “Canadian tuxedo” was created.
It's not uncommon for jean marketing techniques to be born out of clapbacks: after American Eagle's controversial Sydney Sweeney ad, Gap tapped Katseye, Levi’s brought in Beyoncé, Calvin Klein featured MINGYU, and Lucky Brand turned to Addison Rae. This whole summer and fall has just been a denim marketing war.
But denim has always thrived on reinvention. The reason jeans have always had a surge in popularity is because of their versatility, which is bound to attract brands and their fashion designers. The variations of jeans are endless. From the waist, to the wash, to the cut, there were so many ways to make jeans something new and exciting again. Which is why certain styles of jeans remind us of certain time periods. Bell-bottom jeans were popular in the ‘60s and had a resurgence in the ‘90s; low-waisted jeans were first seen in the ‘60s and deemed as “hip-huggers,” mainstreaming in the ‘70s with the disco movement; high-waisted jeans were common in the West, and had their first resurgence in the ‘90s under the title “mom jeans,” with another resurgence in the 2010s.
From that short timeline, it’s clear that, like any trend cycle, jean styles are constantly being revived and reimagined in mainstream fashion. A pair of jeans will never go out of style. Jeans continuously cement themselves as a timeless classic in our culture and our closets, and we know that there will always be a pair that everyone will want to wear. Denim never loses and will forever come out on top.