The history of jeans, part 3: from workwear to rebellion

The 19th century was crucial in the history of jeans, marked by the invention of synthetic indigo dye and the development of riveted jeans. From the mid-20th century onward, this garment finally evolved from workwear into spare-time and then high-fashion clothing, thanks to the greatest icons of the movie and music industries.

Adolf von Baeyer’s revolution in 1865

1865 marked a real revolution in the dyeing process when the German chemist Adolf von Baeyer ended the debate over European woad and Asian Indigofera, inventing synthetic indigo dye. His creation allowed the production of blue fabrics to increase.

Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis patented blue jeans

Over the same years, the German entrepreneur Levi Strauss, who had moved to San Francisco, started selling jeans fabric to make miners’ workwear, while the Russian tailor Jacob Davis, who lived in Reno, Nevada, coped with a request to produce a pair of comfortable and resistant trousers for a logger, creating in 1871 the riveted jeans we still use today.

Davis’s idea to strengthen the weakest parts of the trousers with rivets and double seams, creating an unbeatable garment, was a great success, and the tailor started receiving many orders. Davis partnered with Strauss, who financed the building of a production chain in San Francisco. On May 20th, 1873, they patented their jeans, and “blue jeans” began to identify a specific garment rather than a fabric.

The famous Genoese fustian trousers made in the typical sailors’ style and worn by Giuseppe Garibaldi in 1860, during the landing at Marsala and the war in Sicily, had been made some decades earlier. They are now in the Central Museum of the Risorgimento in Rome.

Jeans’ evolution from workwear to the emblem of a generation

In the ‘30s, some well-known actors, such as John Wayne and Gary Cooper, already wore jeans, while some famous actresses, such as Ginger Rogers and Carole Lombard, tried to convince women to wear them in their spare time. However, until the Second World War, jeans were still considered mainly workwear. The cowboys had started using denim to make jackets and shirts, as well.

In the ‘50s, jeans were transformed into a spare-time garment, becoming an emblem in different eras. They were worn by icons such as Marlon Brando, James Dean, Elvis Presley, and Bob Dylan, and conquered the movie industry first, then the music industry, before finally becoming what the new generations wanted to wear. Young people began wearing jeans to express their will to change and transgress worldwide.

The conquest of high fashion: Calvin Klein’s and Elio Fiorucci’s jeans

The last industry to recognize jeans’ great potential was the fashion sector. Calvin Klein was the first brand to bring them on runways in 1976. In Italy, Elio Fiorucci made high fashion discover denim. His brand was the first to create, thanks to elastane, those tight jeans that became one of the most desirable garments worldwide, especially among women, and to convince other designers, including Giorgio Armani, to include denim in their collections. Since then, denim has been an essential fabric in all the collections of leading international brands.