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00:00You don't really stop and think about why half of the population of the planet is wearing them on any given day.
00:21We just are.
00:24Have you ever asked yourself why everyone you know?
00:30Owns multiple pairs of jeans.
00:32Dress it up, dress it down.
00:34People know that when they wear them, they look cool.
00:38This one garment can be both universal and individual at the same time.
00:45There is nothing like that in the history of clothing.
00:48And in fact, Yves Saint Laurent said he wished he had invented jeans, that he thought they were the most important item of fashion in the 20th century.
00:56They wore them in the mine, on the cattle trail.
01:00My own father wore them topping 200-foot Douglas Bird.
01:05Jeans are the quintessential American garment.
01:10120 years later, gentlemen, blue jeans are still basically the same pair of pants that came out of the California gold rush.
01:19But so much of the story we tell about jeans is a myth.
01:24Strongest pants the West has ever seen.
01:27It's about the cowboys in the West.
01:30It's about Levi Strauss and the gold rush.
01:35It's always the same story.
01:36After the cowboys, jeans got picked up by rockers and bikers and hippies, and now everybody wears them.
01:48But denim has been around much, much longer.
01:53It has a long and deep history with so many other fascinating stories that are not always told.
02:06In 1850, Levi Strauss invented the toughest pants the West had ever known, Levi's Blue Jeans.
02:20Blue jeans do represent American culture to the rest of the world.
02:23But like any other good product of America, you know, we borrow all the best ideas from everywhere.
02:31Levi!
02:31The real fact of the matter is that blue jeans themselves originated somewhere else.
02:38That Levi's were surely the best things of all to roll out of America's West, to roll out of America's West.
02:47The story of denim jeans is so much more than Wrangler.
02:52It's more than Levi Strauss, especially when it comes to the material.
02:57We're not quite sure exactly where the fabric originated, but there are several hints.
03:05One is Dungaree, India, where as early as the 17th century, they were creating a coarse cloth for workers, eventually called Dungaree.
03:15There's the Genoans of Italy, who had a type of sailcloth that was fashioned into work pants.
03:25And there's Nîmes, France, where the cloth there was known as Serge de Nîmes.
03:32Not always, but very often, these various types of cloth were dyed blue, probably to hide dirt as much as anything.
03:38So, we have blue jean from Genoa, we have blue de Nîmes, or denim, coming from Nîmes.
03:50But when we make it into pants in America, we end up morphing the garment into blue jeans.
03:58People don't necessarily think about how their blue jeans came to be blue.
04:05Historically, that's because of the indigo dye.
04:09Centuries ago, indigo was said to be worth its weight in gold.
04:13Competition for it was so fierce, Europeans actually called it the devil's dye.
04:19Indigo is, in fact, a weed.
04:21The process of turning indigo from this small green leaf into a dye is a very delicate process.
04:30So, only the most skilled are able to do this.
04:35One of the neatest things about dyeing with indigo is the dye vat is green.
04:41It's not blue.
04:43And when you introduce a fabric like denim to the dye vat, it comes out green.
04:50And then, as it oxidizes in our atmosphere, it turns blue.
04:56It is magic.
04:58Indigo dyeing is magic.
05:03In many cultures, indigo cloth has a spiritual importance.
05:08In Africa, the cloth is considered the next layer to the skin.
05:14It holds the person's soul, their spirit.
05:20Africans have had a long history of working indigo and knew the special process involved
05:27in making the dyeing and dyeing cloth.
05:32And, of course, many African captives who became enslaved in the New World brought with
05:37them knowledge of how to extract the blue from the plant and how to fix the blue to fabrics.
05:45Indigo is one of the ways in which slaveholding became tied to the economic fortunes of the
05:53colonial experiment in the Americas.
05:54So, in the mid-1700s, there was this labor that had been extracted from Africa, and indigo
06:03presents itself as this thing with economic possibility.
06:08And then when you add to it moving the dye stuff from one end of the world to the other,
06:13it only increased in value.
06:15And Eliza Lucas benefited enormously from the impact of this trade.
06:23Eliza Lucas has been credited as literally producing indigo in America.
06:28She's been credited as a botanist.
06:31She's even written about in elementary school and high school textbooks.
06:37Eliza Lucas was a daughter of a colonial governor.
06:40She had studied botany, and when Eliza was a teenager, her father bought her, among many
06:48other plants, indigo.
06:51The gift came from perhaps Antigua.
06:54The South needed something to add to crop rotation, and tobacco was something cultivated here.
07:00Rice was cultivated here.
07:03Adding indigo into your crop rotation was a way to find additional profit.
07:07Once Eliza gets her hands on the indigo seeds, it takes off in terms of production.
07:16Indigo was the second cash crop behind rice in South Carolina.
07:20And on the eve of the American Revolution, more than a million pounds of indigo was being
07:24shipped overseas.
07:29Eliza Lucas was probably one of the most well-known producers of indigo in colonial America.
07:37But Eliza's hands weren't blue.
07:39She didn't get her hands dirty with the indigo crop.
07:42The knowledge to grow indigo came from enslaved people.
07:46They're the ones that did the work that allowed her to become this great planner that she's
07:50been credited for.
07:55Indigo really encapsulates this problem of how do we begin to tell the story of captive people
08:02and how we document their contributions in America, and to the denim history in particular.
08:11We know the names of all the enslaved people that were owned by the Lucas and Pinckney family.
08:17Isaac, Pompeii, Molly, and their child, Manny.
08:21Mary, her children, Prince, and Becky.
08:23These are generations of families.
08:27We're not just talking about a husband and a wife, or a mom and a dad.
08:31But we see grandparents on this list.
08:33And he and her children, Juno.
08:35They're the ones that came from communities that dyed all kinds of cloth, beautiful colors.
08:41Their daughter, Onaya.
08:42They're the ones that had the knowledge of indigo, and created generations of wealth for
08:47these white, slave-holding families.
08:55Back in the 19th century, denim really dominated because it's a strong weave.
09:01So with the rise in durable cotton goods, denim made itself the accepted second skin in terms
09:09of cloth that was put into clothing meant for laborious work.
09:11As American cotton manufacturing begins to sort of find its footing in the 18-teens and
09:1818-twenties, mills in Rhode Island, mills in Massachusetts, mills in New Hampshire, they
09:23need a source of cotton.
09:25And the only source available to make these mills economically viable is cotton that's
09:30being grown by enslaved men, women, and children in the American South.
09:35Cotton from Alabama.
09:36Cotton from Louisiana.
09:38Texas cotton.
09:39Mississippi cotton.
09:40Cotton from Georgia.
09:43Cotton from Charleston.
09:44It takes two pounds of cotton to make a pair of jeans.
09:47When you follow the trail of cotton being grown in this country, in the South, being shipped
09:56to the North, being woven into blue jeans, and then being shipped down back to the South,
10:04where is it going?
10:05Who's wearing it?
10:06There's a database that's called Freedom on the Move that has catalogued and crowdsourced
10:12runaway slave advertisements from all over the United States.
10:15So the slavers would put an ad describing the person with detailed descriptions of what
10:22they had on them when they left, what clothing they were wearing, what type of clothing, what
10:26color the clothing was.
10:27Had on when he left dark jeans, clothes, and a black hat.
10:31He carried off a blue cloth coat, one blue jeans, and two or three pair pantalons.
10:36Had on a blue Kentucky jeans coat, and striped plaid coat, one blue jeans, and two brown jeans.
10:43And a pair of jeans pants, a black silk hat, a blue jeans, homespun, dress coat.
10:51And so you have advertisements that have very detailed information about enslaved people.
10:58And enslaved people were, in fact, wearing jeans.
11:01This is a story in which coerced labor produces a raw material that is exported from one region
11:09to a second region, and which is then sold back in an ongoing cycle.
11:16An increasing number of American slaves will come to be wearing cloth that's manufactured
11:21in the United States, that travels under a number of names, that sometimes goes under
11:27an umbrella category of Negro cloth.
11:31This is one of the powerful things about clothing, right?
11:34The ways in which it can be used not only for individuals to perform their own identity,
11:38but also for the ways in which a dominant society can stigmatize people.
11:48So blue jeans clearly existed, clearly predated Levi Strauss.
11:54You're looking at farmers, you're looking at factory workers.
11:57Miners were wearing denim.
12:00The enslaved peoples of America were clothed very often in denim.
12:04Basically, any type of labor, hard work that you can think of in the late 19th century, you
12:13would have found people wearing denim.
12:16Jeans did exist, but they ripped.
12:19They ripped and they wore down and they became tatters.
12:23They became unusable.
12:25They didn't last as long.
12:26Anybody who has ever torn a seam through exertion knows that there are certain points in garment
12:34structures that are more stressed than others.
12:38So Jacob Davis is really sort of the unsung hero here.
12:43Jacob Davis was a tailor in Reno, Nevada, or somewhere thereabouts in the 1870s.
12:50Nevada was, you know, one of the great bonanzas at the time.
12:57There's this enormous rush of people, and great fortunes are made there from mining gold.
13:04But the greatest fortunes that are made there are not made by individual prospectors.
13:09They're made by the people who can sell goods to miners.
13:12So this lady approached Jacob Davis, and she said, I have a portly husband who continues
13:18to rip his work pants, and I'd like you to construct a sturdy pair for him.
13:23So he thought, well, I have all these washer and post rivets that people put on these saddles.
13:32Let's add them to all these places he keeps ripping his pants.
13:35So he adds them to places like the fly and mouths of pockets, and even on to the mouth
13:41of the back pocket, which is a patch pocket.
13:44Customer loved them.
13:46Obviously, word of mouth spread.
13:48Soon he had more customers than he could handle, and he wanted to scale up the business, but
13:53he was one man in a tailor shop in Reno, Nevada.
13:56So he contacted Levi Strauss, who was his dry goods supplier, based in San Francisco, and
14:05offered him a partnership deal.
14:07He said, basically, let's go into business together.
14:10We need a patent.
14:11We'll take out the patent, and then we can make these riveted pants, because you have the
14:16wherewithal to scale up.
14:18Levi agreed.
14:19The two of them filed for the patent and received it in 1873.
14:23Three, the basic design has not changed in nearly a century and a half.
14:29Today, every pair of Levi blue jeans have six copper rivets that ensure the longevity of
14:35each pair of pants.
14:36The rivets were crucial in the design for durability.
14:41It's like making some kind of, you know, armor for your body that could just hold up to
14:45anything.
14:46With the addition of the copper rivets, the product becomes the most durable form of workwear
14:55available to any working American.
15:00I'm looking for the ultimate genes.
15:02At the end of the 19th century, Americans were still largely working with their hands.
15:19Nearly 70% of workers were toiling on farms, in factories, mines, or construction.
15:26This, of course, created a huge market for jeans.
15:29But jeans initially weren't called jeans.
15:32They were called waist overalls.
15:35Overalls were so prevalent in the culture that jeans were just a truncated version of
15:41overalls without the bib.
15:43That's where the term waist overalls comes from.
15:45So 1890, 17 years of patent exclusivity for this rivet-reinforced pocket by Levi Strauss and
15:57Company ends.
15:58Now, anyone can use the rivet-reinforced pocket that wants to.
16:03And everybody does it.
16:05Once they lose their patent protection, there are rivets everywhere, there are knockoff logos
16:11and brands everywhere.
16:17So you have companies called can't bust them, can't rip them, and never rip, and never wear out.
16:24There were brands called Black Bear, Double Wear, does fit.
16:27And fits you.
16:29Boss of the road.
16:30Tough nut.
16:31Stronghold.
16:32And so you have all of these companies trying to push their version of the work pant out into
16:40society.
16:42And we start to see so much evolution going on within jeans.
16:47We started with one pocket and a button fly.
16:50There were no belt loops.
16:52Most people wore suspenders.
16:54But in mining, you can't have a strap over your shoulder that could get snagged and cause
17:01the mine to collapse.
17:02And so several folks had a rope tied around the waistband.
17:07Then a second pocket was added.
17:09And there was also a waist cinch.
17:12And then they add zippers.
17:14Belt loops.
17:15There was a rivet at the crotch.
17:17People had been complaining about it for years.
17:19I think they were happy to get rid of that rivet, and that has never come back.
17:24Denim was changing.
17:29And so was America.
17:31That image of someone clad in denim at the turn of the 20th century is inevitably, you
17:37know, romanticized.
17:39And the reality is that people of all different ages, races, and genders were wearing denim
17:47during this time.
17:49Sharecroppers in the South.
17:51Chinese immigrants in the Transcontinental Railway.
17:54As the word of the gold rush spreads not only across the nation, but across the whole
17:58world, people really from all over the world come through and often stay in San Francisco.
18:06Turning San Francisco overnight not only into a booming boomtown, but also into a place where
18:14you have more diversity, a more cosmopolitan place than any other spot on the face of the
18:21earth.
18:21There was a huge nativist outcry in San Francisco at the time, the idea that other people from
18:30elsewhere are coming to take our jobs away.
18:32The backlash galvanizes an immense political movement who make it their central platform to see the expulsion
18:43of Chinese labor.
18:45There's a rise in racism.
18:47There's a rise in racism.
18:48You do see in the 1880s and 90s, no Chinaman made your clothes and made by white labor only.
18:57Because Levi was a San Francisco based company, they decided, okay, we're not hiring any Chinese people.
19:05We're going to give the jobs to the local white people.
19:08I think it's a challenge for us as we embrace how we came to be here, we have to embrace the whole
19:17story and the whole history.
19:19Jeans are a great example to think about American history and a way to go into parts of American
19:24history that we haven't always addressed.
19:26During the Great Depression and the Farm Securities Act and the contracting of photographers to go
19:40about the country to document everyday life, denim became symbolic of our nation.
19:48You see people on the west coast wearing jeans and people laboring in the ports and the shipyards.
19:55You see people in the Empire State sitting on I-beams during lunch breaks and you see
20:00tobacco farmers with sun faded overalls and it became this common identity that I think
20:06helps the country to still feel unified even during dark times.
20:10The knives are cutting, the load piles high, the sun beats down from the August sky.
20:16We built our freedom and strength this way, we're building it still together.
20:22Up until about the 1930s denim was really worn out of necessity.
20:26We get together we're hard to stop working together.
20:30It wasn't until those years and beyond that the product went from a necessity to a fashion.
20:37A lot of that had to do with this nostalgia for the American West.
20:49Thanks to Westerns cowboys became the American figure that kind of helped us get out of the
20:56Great Depression in a way.
20:57We didn't have royalty like in England and other European countries but we had cowboys wearing blue jeans.
21:05Thank you so much.
21:06They were our knights in shining armor.
21:07Follow me ma'am and you'll never go astray.
21:16It's hard for people today to really appreciate how big the Western was.
21:22As the United States is transformed from being a rural and agrarian nation to one in which most
21:29people live in cities or towns, there is a nostalgic embrace of the frontier world lost.
21:38And the cowboys in those Westerns almost always were wearing jeans.
21:42Yet there's no question that when we look more closely at the ways in which genes come into the West,
21:54the story turns out to be much more problematic.
22:00The stories we tell are all white people.
22:03In fact, the reality of life in the American West was much more multi-ethnic.
22:09You know, a significant portion of the workforce were people of color, people from Mexico,
22:18Native Americans, African Americans, probably making up an eighth to a quarter of the cowboy workforce.
22:26So we have a much more complicated reality
22:30that contrasts with the whitening of those figures in the Westerns.
22:34Of course, Hollywood's take on the cowboy was just the start of denim spreading beyond the working class.
22:46Now this shift is happening in an era of huge economic schisms.
22:53The vast majority of people were really struggling during the Great Depression.
23:00But there continued to be an elite class of individuals.
23:05They still traveled. They still shopped.
23:08One consequence at the time was that this idea of the dude ranch came about.
23:23The dude ranch was essentially a getaway, like sort of a spa getaway for wealthy Easterners.
23:29Get yourself some woolly shops or can of beans, a pail.
23:33Then saddle up for a while, my sang, and head out on the trail.
23:38Because of the collapse of many of the sources of income based on cattle ranching and other
23:43traditional agricultural pursuits, many working cattle ranches turned their attention to dudes,
23:49which was a more reliable source of income.
23:51The dude ranch cowhands demand the choice is gross.
23:55They once ate beans and bacon, but now it's quail on toast.
23:59Many of these ranches were very remote.
24:02It might take two weeks to even travel by train and horseback.
24:10They were expensive.
24:12They accepted paying guests to participate in all the ranch chores,
24:16to herd cattle, to brand cattle.
24:18Each wringling cowhand is acting as a guide.
24:22He's rounding up the moonbeams for the lady at his side.
24:26Yippee-ki-yay.
24:26Yippee-ki-yay.
24:28This was particularly an opportunity for women.
24:33American society was still not fully comfortable with the idea of women wearing pants.
24:39In the 1930s, bifurcated garments seemed so unladylike.
24:43Yippee-ki-yay.
24:45Vacationing was a secure laboratory, especially for the women.
24:51When they looked in the mirror, which I think many dudeians did,
24:54they didn't see their old self from Connecticut or Rhode Island.
24:58They saw a cowgirl from the movies.
25:03Denim afforded many women the ability to get dirty, to hunt, to fish, to ride horses.
25:09I think blue jeans on a dude ranch not only gave women the ability to move more freely,
25:16to experience their bodies in different ways, but perhaps also to think more freely,
25:20to rethink their position in American society.
25:26This was one of the first times that women felt comfortable enough to say,
25:31hey, you know what?
25:32I enjoy wearing that kind of clothing.
25:34I'm going to do it.
25:35So the American blue jeans manufacturers realized that there was a substantial market
25:42to be conquered by creating blue jeans lines for women.
25:46So you start seeing the design of jeans beginning to follow fashion in a way that they didn't
25:55previously do when they were strictly work pants.
25:59Jeans entered the world of fashion in the 1930s because they functioned as a souvenir,
26:09and they also functioned as a symbol of wealth and prestige.
26:14Somewhat ironically, the clothes of the working men
26:19became a symbol that you belong to the leisure class.
26:22That's the dichotomy sort of represented in the juxtaposition between the Dorothea Lange photos
26:32of the Dust Bowl and Lady Levi's in Vogue.
26:36They can coexist because there was this extreme inequality in America.
26:50Since October 16, 1940, millions of American men have joined the armed forces to defend our
27:02country and our democratic way of life.
27:05For many men and women, World War II was the first time they wore jeans.
27:09The men at the ship left port, neckties were dropped on them.
27:12The enlisted men wore dungarees, and the traditional white hats were dyed blue.
27:16So here are the men who wore white shoes.
27:18World War II is a moment where denim goes global, in a sense.
27:28One result of Americans fighting overseas was that the GIs, when they were off duty,
27:34were in many cases wearing blue jeans.
27:36And the locals took notice and thought, well, they look like movie stars.
27:43They look cool.
27:44They look like, you know, what we want to look like.
27:51There's a way in which during the 1940s, because of the patriotism around World War II,
27:58denim almost became the blue in the red, white, and blue of the American flag.
28:07You know, and Rosie the Riveter is a kind of classic example of this.
28:11There's something true about red, white, and blue about Rosie the Riveter.
28:16Rosie the Riveter was a Norman Rockwell painting that ended up on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post.
28:22She was like the American everywoman who, when the menfolk were away fighting the war in Europe,
28:30she pitched in, she did her part.
28:33All the day long, when the rain has shined, she's the part of the assembly's land.
28:38She's making history, working for victory, roving.
28:43With so many of the men overseas, something like six million mothers and daughters
28:48were suddenly going to work on a daily basis, then to a large extent wearing denim.
28:53Waitresses, sales girls, housewives.
28:56These girls are now ready to tackle the work of producing weapons and equipment
29:00essential to our armed forces.
29:11The day of days for America and her alive.
29:14How jubilant was the taste of victory.
29:19How sweet the rewards of peace.
29:23From all the scattered battlefields, he returned home again to find a soldier's welcome.
29:35So what happens when the soldiers who were wearing denim overseas come home?
29:39They kept wearing denim.
29:41Why not?
29:42They're great pants.
29:43They're comfortable.
29:43They're durable.
29:44They'd gotten used to them.
29:45They liked them.
29:46Why not?
29:50As the World War II vets started to come back, they obviously had been through a lot.
29:56They felt a lot of camaraderie.
29:58They felt a lot of brotherhood in the trenches.
30:01And to come back into a very staid kind of 9-to-5 lifestyle for some people, it wasn't going to work.
30:12But the combination of a big motorcycle and denim, that really worked.
30:19He wore black denim trousers and motorcycle boots and a black leather jacket with a needle on the back.
30:25They've all got jeans on, a t-shirt with a cigarette pack rolled up in it.
30:30You look pretty tough.
30:32Suddenly, bikers have become modern-day outlaws.
30:35Well, he never washed his face and he never combed his hair.
30:38He had axle grease embedded underneath his fingernails.
30:41So the idea of the outlaw, which has always had a strong hold on the American popular imagination,
30:48was actually promoted by the movies and linked in particular with jeans.
30:59You know, we see that a lot in the Hollywood of the 1950s.
31:03Classically represented by Marlon Brando in the biker film, The Wild One.
31:09Brando's character was, of course, the guy who's asked,
31:13what are you rebelling against?
31:14Hey, Johnny, what are you rebelling against?
31:16And he says, what do you got?
31:19Like, I don't know what it is that I'm rebelling against.
31:22I'm just doing it.
31:25All bets were off at that point.
31:27A lot of teenagers may not have wanted to become Wally or Beaver.
31:32My friends call me Beaver.
31:33Well, may I call you Beaver?
31:34I'd like you to be my friend.
31:36Okay.
31:37They were able to make the choice.
31:41And part of that choice was, you know, having jeans on.
31:46The early teens are years of upheaval and turmoil.
31:50They're years of physical and glandular change.
31:53Parents of almost every child find the age of puberty or early adolescence
31:58full of problems.
31:59After World War II, really the teenager as we now know it came into being.
32:05Their actions may seem excessive, but that's normal for teenagers.
32:08They seem to spend hours in completely useless activity.
32:12Roll, roll, everybody.
32:14Prior to World War II, you were either a young person living at home, going to school,
32:20or when you were finished with school, then you entered the workforce.
32:24You were contributing to the family income.
32:27You're rockin' and you're rockin' and you're rockin' around.
32:31After World War II, the middle class exploded.
32:34Families could offer their kids more leisure time, more independence.
32:39The rock and roll teenage cowboy.
32:42The American consumer economy was booming and it just became the American way of life.
32:47Spend money, buy things, dress up, you know, move up the food chain.
32:51Gather round, kiddies.
32:53Today I'm going to give you a quick look-see at what the well-dressed teenager is doing
32:57in the way of fun and fashion.
32:59If teenagers decided to work, they could use that money for their own benefit, for their own leisure time.
33:07They could buy their own cars.
33:08They bought their own records.
33:09They sort of helped create rock and roll.
33:11Teenagers, they're terrific.
33:16Jeans got sort of irreparably linked with cool.
33:23And coolness became the ideal to strive for.
33:27Kay's mother may have other opinions of style, of what looks best.
33:32But of course, mother has old-fashioned ideas.
33:34It's like, what mom and dad want to do?
33:36Oh my god, I can't even talk to them.
33:39I do not want to wear what they're wearing.
33:41The adolescent is self-centered.
33:43The charisma of deviance is powerful.
33:45Their sloppiness is so deliberate as to be offensive.
33:48So during the 1950s, denim becomes increasingly associated with biker gangs and juvenile delinquency.
34:03There is a sort of fear, I think, among adults that if teenagers put on a pair of jeans,
34:09they were automatically going to become delinquents in some way.
34:14School systems literally started banning blue jeans
34:18because they identified the kids who wore them as the bad seeds.
34:22They were going to, you know, beat up a little old lady and steal her pocketbook or whatever.
34:28The parents' generation started to clamp down,
34:31which caused a dip in sales.
34:34Suddenly, families were shying away from buying blue jeans.
34:39The denim companies start to get worried.
34:43As a result, a lot of the major companies band together to form what they called the Denim Council.
34:51More people than ever are wearing denim.
34:53You'd have to look far and wide to find an American of any age who has never worn blue jeans.
34:58So they start this whole campaign first to try to counter the bad blue jean look with the wholesome blue jean look.
35:08This is the right way to wear jeans, and it's neat with a nice shirt and this very kind of healthy looking kid.
35:14And then this is the bad blue jean.
35:16And so it's the more the kid, like with his hair hanging down, greasy and all that kind of stuff.
35:21Like, see, there is a difference.
35:22You can be a good kid and wear blue jeans.
35:24Denim is really great for sports.
35:27Looks like this joker's knocking himself out trying to prove it.
35:32Folks wear jeans to get the work done and jeans to relax in.
35:35They tried to create a national denim day.
35:38They had all sorts of campaigns around the country, which are all about the discovery of America.
35:46They are about cowboys.
35:48They are about adventure and history.
35:53Blue denim is a symbol of our pioneering spirit.
35:56It goes right back to the beginning of America.
36:00Men in blue denim opened up the Old West and built our bridges and skyscrapers.
36:06That series of advertisements helped reverse the trend away from blue jeans.
36:10In the last few months, more applications for the Peace Corps have come to us.
36:15By the first years of the 1960s, the Peace Corps, JFK's initiative,
36:20sending young Americans out across the globe to do good deeds,
36:24they were actually dressed in blue jeans.
36:26That was their uniform.
36:29So no longer was it that the bad kids were the only ones wearing blue jeans.
36:35One thing in particular that's interesting about this period is the denim companies
36:41spend all this time in the 1950s trying to get away from the rebel image.
36:51And then the 1960s happens.
36:52When we think about the denim story in the 1960s, we almost automatically think of hippies
37:06with their bell bottoms and tie dye.
37:10But the hippies weren't the only people wearing those clothes.
37:14A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice.
37:18Yes.
37:19A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true.
37:24Yes.
37:24So we're going to stand up right here.
37:27The classic image of the Civil Rights Movement is Martin Luther King Jr.
37:32and he and many of his closest partners wore suits and button-down shirts, sort of a Sunday best approach.
37:43We'll be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual,
37:49free at last, free at last.
37:51Thanks Lord Almighty, we are free at last.
37:56Being a man of African descent, a lot hinged on his self-representation.
38:01He needed to present himself to the world as a respectable person because
38:05there was already a notch against him for being a black man.
38:09The focus on the Sunday best has obscured the fact that at that time,
38:16there were these young college students who say,
38:19instead, we're going to wear denim because we want to show that our political bonds are to the black
38:25working poor and not to the black bourgeois.
38:30These young people, once they left Howard University, Fisk University, Tougaloo College,
38:38to head south, say, we're going to wear this denim alongside the working class and sharecroppers who
38:45had been trying for decades to fight for their right to vote.
38:49And so they were rebels with a cause.
38:52Freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom.
39:03For young black protesters, it absolutely is risky with what they're wearing because they already have
39:10the systemic pressure up against them, presuming that they are of a lower class or status in society.
39:17And so wearing a certain style of dress that is aligned with the laboring class, that is absolutely bold.
39:24So as the Southern movement spreads and garners national media attention,
39:33you now have white students who decide to go south to help with the organizing.
39:39so when those white students go back north they go back wearing denim
39:50this becomes the look of youth rebellion in the 1960s
39:57they represent a new form of social rebellion they dress in bizarre and colorful ways
40:14hippies are very interesting the 1960s is a pivotal point in the history of denim
40:20they are kept on to something good just like for the civil rights movement for the hippies
40:25clothing was a form of political activism of course it's a whole different way of living
40:30it's a whole different way of thinking so many of the civilians have no concept but it's fun
40:38it's fun to be bizarre there was such an emphasis with the counterculture on creativity on
40:43individuality self-expression
40:46people then embellished in their jeans they sewed fringe on them they put feathers they were patched
40:58painted embroidered and shredded all of a sudden your jeans were your canvases there was a cool
41:09factor and rock stars and musicians started wearing denim it became even cooler there was the who and
41:17janice joplin and the doors the rolling stones led zeppelin so then everyone wanted to wear them
41:26woodstock woodstock that movie completely expanded our idea of fashion i know for me being this kid
41:37in north carolina when i saw that movie i'm like i want to wear clothes like that
41:42denim was the uniform of that generation and a lot of the denim companies started to capitalize
41:54on that it's interesting to look at that case study of levi's because in the 1950s they tried so
42:02hard to get away from the counterculture and then by 1971 they use an aerial shot of the crowd
42:12at the music festival and just slap a levi's logo on it and that's it
42:17it's been said that those children of the 60s came in as a tribe and went out as a market
42:34they were the market for blue jeans
42:36by the time you get into the early 70s hippie chic is everywhere the fashion industry becomes wildly
42:52taken with these young radicals you have designers with ads that suggested that the real freedom
43:02movement is in your jeans it is ironic isn't it rewind like a decade earlier youth were sort of
43:09wearing denim as a form of rebellion by the time we get to the 1970s like denim is being commodified
43:16the fashion industry co-ops authentic subcultural styles and then makes them part of a system whether
43:26it seems dangerous or seems totally trivial the fashion industry takes any cool look or stance
43:33and markets it if it sees an audience for it we start to see denim jeans become just a very lucrative
43:43product they were really kind of a great blank canvas for designers to express themselves
43:49when i was 16 years old i was enamored with music and musicians and i couldn't play so i couldn't
44:00be a musician but i wanted to look like a rock star so i opened a small shop called people's place
44:07and started selling jeans at one point i was thinking i think i could design better jeans than
44:15we're buying from vendors the fashion industry realizes that there's this massive market for
44:23all things denim now it's sleek high rise tight there becomes a certain kind of glamour associated
44:34with jeans for the first time it was a turning point which became the era of designer jeans there was
44:44gloria vanderbilt calvin klein those halston sasun fiorucci sergio valente we were really trying to
44:52outdo one another with sexiness
44:56but when brooke shields as a young teen was the calvin klein poster girl i think heads turned
45:07you want to know what comes between me and my calvins nothing
45:11calvin klein jeans and everyone said okay well this is going to a whole new level
45:17it's like a tidal wave over the whole industry people started actually verbalizing what everyone
45:28had known for a hundred years that blue jeans are sexy
45:32by the late 70s designer jeans were chipping away at the fashion hierarchy they make it acceptable
45:44for anyone to wear a pair of jeans at any time or place jeans undermine the idea of what fashion was
45:55supposed to be they were part of a more general democratization of fashion it suddenly became
46:02possible to wear jeans in almost all settings
46:06in the late 1970s around the bronx in new york city we started to see hip-hop emerge
46:20and denim jeans become this sort of uniform
46:24for african-americans a pair of designer jeans came with a lot of value
46:37that's why we get language coming straight out of hip-hop like fresh dope fly
46:43you know because that spoke to the value of clothing hip-hop changed denim in a very big way
46:53the hip-hop stars started going on tour and doing mtv videos wearing really cool clothes
47:02the way in which it was worn was very different
47:07in the early 80s with fans like run dmc it's just more of a straight look um but then it becomes more baggy
47:20and then they started to wear brands like rock lauren nautica tommy hilfiger those brands represented
47:33a lifestyle that historically african-americans have been excluded from
47:37i want to thank snoop doggie dog and everybody on the show
47:40i mean when we think about those brands
47:44we think about the country club or yachting
47:49tommy hilfiger top yeah take no shorts i'm doing lovely in all sports
47:54even swing the pole like a hole on my golf course
47:56by putting a brand like ralph warren or tommy hilfiger on their backs
48:00they were changing the meaning of the brand
48:02this brand that's associated with all-american identity or with whiteness
48:06becomes associated with like hip-hop culture
48:08not only do we see hip-hop artists able to remix sounds and you know like in music
48:27they're also able to take clothing and remix it for their own means
48:31to get your hands on that clothing and wear it is subversive in a way
48:37because it is saying i'm not supposed to be wearing this but look at me i am
48:41hip-hop really helped to take command of the denim narrative
48:46jeans are probably the single most iconic garment of the 20th century
48:53jeans are probably the single most iconic garment of the 20th century
49:01each generation keeps rediscovering how jeans can be meaningful for them
49:08blue jeans are an amazing thing for anyone trying to tell a broader history of the united states
49:15it allows you to talk about slavery uh it allows you to talk about fashion and consumerism
49:22it allows you to talk about cool and the invention of cool and have all of these things under the same heading
49:29uh it allows you to talk about fashion and consumerism it allows you to talk about cool and the invention of cool
49:37and have all of these things under the same heading uh is really quite remarkable
49:44denim and its history is a perfect metaphor for where we find ourselves as a culture right now
49:52it allows you to talk about fashion and consumerism it allows you to talk about cool and the invention of cool
49:58colorist women they might be comfortable and the imperium useful itself a lot of popular stuff
50:26it into that typical telling of jeans is part of the work to change our understanding of
50:34American history.
50:41It's a long journey from Negro cloth to hip hop denim and baggy jeans ruling the denim
50:49market in the 1990s.
50:53As I sit here in a denim jacket, you know, it's clear to me that we can see the rich tapestry
50:59of where we've been as a people, as a nation.
51:07The thing about the denim jean is it tells a story about who we are.
51:14It's a garment that's almost like keeping the fingerprints of our history, the creases,
51:19the tears, all of it.
51:21You know, you can repair it all you want, mend it all you want, but the scars of that,
51:27that material memory will remain there.
51:33Next time, the story of three black diplomats who broke racial barriers.
51:45The State Department was being extremely elitist.
51:49They could never conceive that a black man could ever be an ambassador.
51:51It is hard to do the work of America when you have been Jim Crowed by your own government.
51:57The American Diplomat.
51:59The American Diplomat.
52:00Next time on American Experience.
52:01Made possible in part by Liberty Mutual Insurance.
52:05American Experience, Riveted, The History of Jeans, is available on DVD.
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52:25And there's no predicament.
52:26The universe where the world can begin hours to prepare for a prosperity family.
52:42Everything betweenlication is almost like 20 years,