Riveted: The History of Jeans – An American Experience Encore

Discover the evolution of the iconic American garment from slavery to protests, high fashion and hip-hop

• Christina Zeiders
  BioRecent Stories

  

  Christina Zeiders is the Communications Specialist at WITF. She helps get the word out about all of WITF's programs, events and community conversations.

Riveted: The History of Jeans tells the fascinating and surprising story of an iconic American garment – jeans.

Worn by virtually everyone, America’s complicated past is woven into the indigo fabric. From its roots in slavery to the Wild West, youth culture, the civil rights movement, rock and roll, high fashion, and hip-hip – jeans have been a part of American culture and politics through it all.

Riveted explores this rich history through interviews with historians, authors, designers, and self-proclaimed “denim heads.”

The story of jeans typically begins with Levi Strauss, a Bavarian immigrant looking to make his fortune selling garments to the 49ers during the California Gold Rush. But half a century before Strauss, enslaved people in the American South wore a precursor of denim made from a coarse fabric known as “slave cloth.”

Eliza Lucas, the daughter of an 18th-century colonial governor, has been credited as a savvy entrepreneur who jump-started the southern economy with indigo production, the dye behind the blue hue of jeans. The West African enslaved people – whose knowledge of growing and processing indigo for the arduous dyeing process had been brought with them – are often left out of the narrative.

And though Levi Strauss brought jeans to market, it was Jacob Davis who added the iconic reinforcing copper rivets. His innovation created a garment so strong that nearly every American laborer was wearing jeans by the 1930s.

Hollywood has also shaped the history of denim throughout the years. Dude ranches changed the perception of blue jeans as “working-class” attire, as American women of a certain class began vacationing at these working ranches in the 1930s to enjoy a taste of “the cowboy life” made popular in film, wearing jeans as they helped with chores on the working ranches.

Soon jeans evolved into a garment worn not just for labor but for leisure, moving off the pages of the Sears catalog and onto the pages of Vogue.

In the postwar era, denim became the emblem of bad-boy cool. From the moment Marlon Brando donned a pair of Levi 501s in 1953’s The Wild Ones, jeans would never be the same. Denim became the unofficial uniform of teen rebellion, leading some schools to ban the garment.

The story of jeans in the 1960s often focuses on how the hippies transformed blue jeans into vivid garments of protest, but denim also played a pivotal role in the civil rights movement.

CUNY Professor Tanisha Ford reveals the story of the denim-clad Black college students who traveled south to organize protests. These “rebels with a cause” transformed jeans into a potent symbol of solidarity with the Southern Black working class.

By the 1970s, jeans had grown into a billion-dollar industry and found a home in nearly every closet in America. The rise of labels such as Jordache, Calvin Klein, and Gloria Vanderbilt made jeans an affordable designer item – and sales skyrocketed.

In the 1980s and 90s, hip-hop in pushed jeans into a new realm. Baggier cuts and a subversive take on preppy, high-end brands such as Ralph Lauren and Tommy Hilfiger reflected anti-establishment and rebellious notions.

Boot cut, flare, and skinny. Ripped, faded, or acid washed. Everyone has their favorite style and their favorite pair.

“Jeans are the perfect, quintessentially American item through which to examine the complex story of America,” says American Experience executive producer Cameo George. “They reflect their times and provide a unique and unexpected starting point for discussions of race, gender, class, and culture. And they’re also one of the few things we all agree on — we all love our jeans!”

Watch Riveted: The History of Jeans on WITF TV or the PBS Video app live stream on Tuesday, January 10 at 9pm. Stream the documentary on-demand, on your own schedule, with WITF Passport.