'Cultural Artifact Essay – Blue Jeans Essay\r'

'Blue jeans in the last thirty years squander attained much(prenominal) world great popularity that they have come to be geted an Ameri lav icon. However jeans have not continuously been held in high stead, only if kinda have had a troubled record including its beginnings within the cut backing material body movement, organism considered unsavory by religious leaders hip and also seen as a seditious statement ab proscribed ‘western degeneration’. According to the University of Toronto, no separate tog has served as an example of precondition ambivalence and ambiguity than colored jeans in the account of fashion.\r\nThroughout this essay I lead discuss how jeans have become such(prenominal)(prenominal) a common treasured and horizontal expensive item crossing everywhere grade, gender, age, regional, and national lines as reflected by the many a(prenominal) changing political views and acceptance from assorted social classes over the past 50 years. tale of Blue Jeans According to the University of Toronto, unrelenting jeans were originally arrive atd for the California coal miners in the mid-nineteenth century by the Morris Levi Strauss, a Bavarian immigrant who relocated to naked as a jaybird York in 1847.\r\nMr Strauss’ parcel and the write up of clothing changed forever when in 1872 he received an offer from Jacob Davis, a tailor from Reno Nevada. Mr. Davis, in order to purify the durability of the pants that he do for his clients, had been adding metal rivets to the passing stressed seams. The supposition was successful and he wished to patent it, but due to financial constraints required a partner and hence Levi became the financial disciple and partner.\r\nIn 1873, the new partners received a patent for â€Å"an improvement in bolt Pocket-Openings”, and thus the history of hot jeans as we know them began. Blue jeans were originally called â€Å" shank overalls” by Levi Strauss and Co and in the 1920’s these were the most widely used doer’s pants in America. The micturate of these trousers changed to â€Å"jeans” in the 1960’s when Levi Strauss and Co. recognized that this was what the fruit was being called by the four-year-old, hip adolescent boys.\r\nThe history of â€Å"waist overalls” continues as the history of blue jeans. â€Å"Jeans” is now generally understand to refer to pants made out of a specific type of material called â€Å" blue jean” ( mould Encyclopedia). Blue Jeans through the decades The popularity of blue jeans spread among working people, such as farmers and the ranchers of the American West. According to the Encyclopedia of fashion, in the 1930’s jeans became so popular among cowboys that horse wrangler formed just to make denim work clothing for those who rode the range.\r\nJeans have tended to quest after along in popularity with popular shade as evident with the popular wester n sandwich films which found adventure and romance in the adventures of the cowboys who rode horses, shot bad guys, and wore blue jeans. Those who wished to result the casual, rugged look of the cowboys they saw in films began to go to pieces off jeans as casual wear (Fashion Encyclopedia). This effect is not stark to understand, as hitherto today fashion trends argon greatly influenced by what highly publicize celebrities choose to wear.\r\nDuring creation War II blue jeans became part of the official analogous of the Navy and Coast Guard, and became even more(prenominal) popular when worn as off-duty leisure time clothing by many other soldiers. In his book, â€Å"Jeans: A Cultural History of an American Icon”, James Sullivan states that the wage increase of the popularity of jeans after the WWII can greatly be attributed to the influence of the film and music industry, during the mid-fifties many young people began to wear jeans when they saw them on disobedien t young American film stars such as Marlon Brando and James Dean.\r\nBy 1950, Levi’s began exchange nationally and other brands started emerging, such as Lee Coopers and each with its own contingent fit (Sullivan 287). According to the University of Toronto, in the 1960’s and 1970’s jeans were embraced by the nonconformist hipster youth movement, and the history of blue jeans even gets linked to the downfall of communism. Behind the push curtain, jeans became a symbol of â€Å"western devolution” and individuality and as such were highly sought. Jeans had become extremely popular, but were even-tempered mainly worn by working people or the young.\r\nIn the 1980’s through to the 1990’s jeans were no longish seen as rebellious or a source of individuality, but they were transformed as the term ‘designer jeans’ was discovered. Many designers such as Jordache and Calvin Klein came on board to create expensive jeans and some j eans even reached haute couture status (Fashion Encyclopedia). In the new millennium denim is seen on designer catwalks and there be now hundreds of styles, types and labels useable and of various expenditure ranges. Changing Popularity\r\nAccording to Peter Beagle in his book â€Å"American denim: A New Folk Art”, the popularity of jeans can be attributed to the fact that jeans can be seen to embrace the American democratic value of independence, freedom and equality. Some Americans even consider jeans to be the national uniform. Blue jeans have evolved from a garment associated exclusively with hard work to one associated with leisure. What began as work clothes has transformed into one of the â€Å"hottest” items available on the consumer market today. What was at one time plume associated with low culture has undergone a change of mind in status.\r\nBlue jeans were the first to arrive at a rather revolutionary heathen achievement bringing upper class status to a lower class garment. Conclusion At one show or another throughout history, blue jeans have been the uniform of many groups and be considered the one garment of clothing that has remained hip for over a century and has survived everything from World War II to the eighties. For half a century blue jeans have helped arrange every youth movement, and every military campaign of older generations to deny the passing of youth.\r\n liter years ago America invented the conceit of teenager, and it is probably no coincidence that the perpetual character of blue jeans, claiming independence and the office to self-expression, can be traced to the same time. Jeans were once seen as clothing for minority groups such as workers, hippies or rebellious youth, but are now embraced by the dominant American culture as a whole. Works Cited â€Å"Material husbandry”. Utoronto. ca. University of Toronto Department of History, University of Toronto, n. d. Web\r\nâ€Å"European civiliza tion 19th Century †Blue Jeans”. Fashionencyclopedia. com. Fashion Encyclopedia, Advameg, June 2010. Web. â€Å"Modern World 1980 †2003, Designer Jeans”. Fashionencyclopedia. com. Fashion Encyclopedia, Advameg, June 2010. Web. Sullivan, James. Jeans: A Cultural History of an American Icon. New York: Penguin, 2007. Print. George, Diana and Trimbur, John. Reading Culture: Contexts for deprecative reading and writing. New York: Longman, 2007. Print. Beagle, Peter. American Denim: A New Folk Art. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1975. Print.\r\n'