Introduction
Our body temperature is approximately 37oC and so if the surrounds is hotter we need to wear clothes to protect us from the heat and if it is colder we need clothes to warm us. Being naked is never a good look! Hence even in Paupa New Guinea there are certain items that need to be covered even if the temperature of the surrounds are at blood temperature.
Man from the Dani tribe wearing a penis sheath, Baliem Valley, West Papua, Western New Guinea.
Clothes are also a complex social statement. With clothes we tell people who we are, sometimes unconsciously but at other times with intent!
Goth Girl.
Because of the garments we wear we can project our nationality, our membership of a group as well as display our economic and social status, our age and gender.
Engelleiter Women's Traditional costume Lederhosen Pants.
In every era this was desirable and obvious, but with the coming of the industrial revolution and clothes becoming more readily available and cheaper, today's diversity has led to less clarity in all of these categories. Perhaps the most socially inclusive clothing item that revolutionised our way of thinking was the humble pair of Levi Strauss jeans.
An embroidered Levi Strauss woman jeans.
Jeans: The Garment of the Twentieth Century[1-2]
Jeans were originally sturdy, robust working trousers for gold diggers on the west coast of the US. The oldest serving jean in the world is a Levi Strauss pair that is over 150 years old.
This pair was made in 1879.
The above pair is wide and durable enough to wear over long johns while out harvesting timber or mining silver in 1879, the year they were produced. Back then, the relic went by a different, old-timey name - waist overalls - in order to contrast with its competitor the popular bib overalls.
Tracey Panek, the Levi Strauss & Co. historian, wrote:
'I like to think of them as the very first early sustainable garment ... you could wear them out, you could pass them on, you could patch them up.'
They were first made for men who worked in mines, cowboys and farmers, and developed in parallel with the history of the American West, before they went global.
Teenagers embraced blue jeans in the 1950s, when Hollywood movies used jeans as a fashionable symbol of rebellion against the status quo. Pop culture "bad boys" such as James Dean and Marlon Brando popularized jeans in their films, wearing denim as they shook up society at large. This led to blue jeans being banned in some public schools in America, for being too provocative as they symbolised a revolt against the status quo.
James Dean - a bad boy that all the young loved.
The 1960s launched the beginning of the hippie age. The youthful, free love movement that rocked American culture embraced the casual blue jean, which was seen to represent freedom from more structured clothing. In this decade of creative expression, personalizing your jeans was considered very groovy. Embroidery, bright colors, stone washing, rhinestones and patches were just some of the hip jean trends of the time. Popular cuts included bell bottom flares and low-rise hip huggers.
Hippie jeans were bedazzled, flared and patched.
Since then jeans have been a forever evolving fashion: 1980s the birth of the designer jeans; 1990s the birth of the baggy jeans; 2000s the skinny jean makeover; to present where high waisted, cropped legs and Indie brands have become the in-thing.
Britney Spears with today's look.
Below is a table of the market share of the jeans market in the United States from 2012 to 2015 by company.
What is not shown in the table above is how the jean market has grown within countries with their own brands outside of the US. For example, Just Jeans is an Australian company that not only sells jeans but makes it own jeans under its brand name.
Just Jeans for men: stretch slim tapered leg.
Just Jeans for women: slim & flatten, hi rise and skinny.
Jeans represent how we wish to represent ourselves unashamedly. We don't care if we look fat in them, if we look sexy, and if we look motherly. Jeans just make us feel like our mood. They say to our psyche that: 'be what you want to be!' Jeans make us feel comfortable and make us disregard how others perceive us. The only garment that says: 'I don't care what you think of me, I love what I am and how comfortable I feel!'
Reference
[1] https://mashable.com/2015/03/17/oldest-levis-blue-jeans/
[2] https://www.liveabout.com/the-history-of-jeans-2040397
Our body temperature is approximately 37oC and so if the surrounds is hotter we need to wear clothes to protect us from the heat and if it is colder we need clothes to warm us. Being naked is never a good look! Hence even in Paupa New Guinea there are certain items that need to be covered even if the temperature of the surrounds are at blood temperature.
Clothes are also a complex social statement. With clothes we tell people who we are, sometimes unconsciously but at other times with intent!
Because of the garments we wear we can project our nationality, our membership of a group as well as display our economic and social status, our age and gender.
In every era this was desirable and obvious, but with the coming of the industrial revolution and clothes becoming more readily available and cheaper, today's diversity has led to less clarity in all of these categories. Perhaps the most socially inclusive clothing item that revolutionised our way of thinking was the humble pair of Levi Strauss jeans.
Jeans: The Garment of the Twentieth Century[1-2]
Jeans were originally sturdy, robust working trousers for gold diggers on the west coast of the US. The oldest serving jean in the world is a Levi Strauss pair that is over 150 years old.
The above pair is wide and durable enough to wear over long johns while out harvesting timber or mining silver in 1879, the year they were produced. Back then, the relic went by a different, old-timey name - waist overalls - in order to contrast with its competitor the popular bib overalls.
Tracey Panek, the Levi Strauss & Co. historian, wrote:
'I like to think of them as the very first early sustainable garment ... you could wear them out, you could pass them on, you could patch them up.'
They were first made for men who worked in mines, cowboys and farmers, and developed in parallel with the history of the American West, before they went global.
Teenagers embraced blue jeans in the 1950s, when Hollywood movies used jeans as a fashionable symbol of rebellion against the status quo. Pop culture "bad boys" such as James Dean and Marlon Brando popularized jeans in their films, wearing denim as they shook up society at large. This led to blue jeans being banned in some public schools in America, for being too provocative as they symbolised a revolt against the status quo.
The 1960s launched the beginning of the hippie age. The youthful, free love movement that rocked American culture embraced the casual blue jean, which was seen to represent freedom from more structured clothing. In this decade of creative expression, personalizing your jeans was considered very groovy. Embroidery, bright colors, stone washing, rhinestones and patches were just some of the hip jean trends of the time. Popular cuts included bell bottom flares and low-rise hip huggers.
Since then jeans have been a forever evolving fashion: 1980s the birth of the designer jeans; 1990s the birth of the baggy jeans; 2000s the skinny jean makeover; to present where high waisted, cropped legs and Indie brands have become the in-thing.
Below is a table of the market share of the jeans market in the United States from 2012 to 2015 by company.
What is not shown in the table above is how the jean market has grown within countries with their own brands outside of the US. For example, Just Jeans is an Australian company that not only sells jeans but makes it own jeans under its brand name.
Jeans represent how we wish to represent ourselves unashamedly. We don't care if we look fat in them, if we look sexy, and if we look motherly. Jeans just make us feel like our mood. They say to our psyche that: 'be what you want to be!' Jeans make us feel comfortable and make us disregard how others perceive us. The only garment that says: 'I don't care what you think of me, I love what I am and how comfortable I feel!'
Reference
[1] https://mashable.com/2015/03/17/oldest-levis-blue-jeans/
[2] https://www.liveabout.com/the-history-of-jeans-2040397
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