BLUE STREAK: Jeans are not mere articles of clothing, but denim canvases for memorable moments
There's something suspicious about a pristine pair of jeans. Without the stains that say something about touch football games and spilled Kool-Aid, without the rips that tell the story of an unfortunate run-in with a fence, jeans are just pants, and that's not right at all.
Now that it's getting chilly, people have pulled out their cold-weather clothes and are renewing relationships with their favorite jeans. A staple of most Americans' wardrobes, jeans aren't just pants. They're a pastiche of the owner's life experiences, a nostalgia trip with each wearing.
�(Jeans) are a trusted friend,� said Mark-Evan Blackman, chairman of the menswear design department at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. �The jean doesn't change even though the fashion statement around it does.�
The consistent nature of jeans is something Ed Johnson of Colorado Springs, Colo., appreciates. Growing up in the late 1960s and early 1970s, everybody he knew wore jeans.
�Cowboys wore Wranglers and hippies wore Levi's. And I've always worn jeans. I've always had at least three pairs of jeans,� he said.
When he was in high school, he always had a favorite pair of jeans that his mom patched with deerskin. He remembers raveling the hem and splitting the bottom of the side seam of his jeans in junior high, then getting into designer jeans with buttons and bell bottoms in high school. He even had a denim suit his senior year of high school, which he wore to prom and to a job interview. The interviewer told him he wouldn't get the job because he wore jeans, and he protested, �But it's a suit!�
Now he wears jeans to work every day at a music store in Colorado Springs and has three pairs with a hole in the left knee, though he's not sure how the holes got there.
Lona Ladrow's favorite jeans are in better condition because she wore them only a few times. She bought them at a department store in Wausau, Wis., in 1971 or 1972 � hip-hugging bell-bottom jeans printed with photos of crowd scenes at Woodstock. �I saw those pants and thought, �Wow, those are cool,� � she said.
Ladrow wore them to homecoming weekend at the University of Wisconsin at Stout, a year after her 1971 graduation. In two blurry photos of her with friends that weekend, she's wearing the jeans with a navy turtleneck and funky, wide belt, looking happy and va-va-voom.
She looks at those photos now, and at the jeans, and says, �I have no idea why I kept them. I look at them and think these people in the photos are 50, 60 years old now.�
But after further consideration she knows she kept them because she likes them, because she likes who she was in them.
Stephan Cherry, a Colorado Springs chef, also likes who he is in his favorite jeans � namely, a comfortable guy.
His favorite jeans are medium-blue Levi's he bought at J.C. Penney a few years ago because they are button-fly, were at a good price and because his girlfriend said she liked his butt in them. They're comfortable and in good condition because they're his favorites, so he doesn't wear them often. �They're like my dress-up jeans,� he said.
In a November 1983 interview with New York magazine, designer Yves Saint Laurent said, �I wish I had invented blue jeans. They have expression, modesty, sex appeal, simplicity � all I hope for in my clothes.�
The invention of German tailor Levi Strauss, jeans went through gold camps, farms, refineries and factories before landing, most famously, on James Dean and Marlon Brando in the 1950s. Paired with a white T-shirt and leather jacket, they came to symbolize the transformative power of clothes. At first, jeans were a mark of rebellion, but in their growing ubiquity they became one of the canvases on which people painted their identities � appropriate covering to facilitate the creation of memory.
In 2001, Americans spent $11.4 billion on jeans for men, women and children, according to NPD Fashionworld, a New York-based global market information group. In units sold, that's 147 million pairs of children's jeans, 212 million pairs of men's jeans and 211 million pairs of women's jeans.
BLUE JEAN ICONS
Marlon Brando in �The Wild One� � wearing jeans, sitting astride a motorcycle and responding, �Whaddya got?� to a townswoman who asks him what he's rebelling against
James Dean in �Rebel Without a Cause� � white T-shirt, red jacket, blue jeans
Bruce Springsteen � on the cover of �Born in the U.S.A.�
Brooke Shields � proclaiming �Nothing comes between me and my Calvins.�
George Michael � having �Faith�
Kurt Cobain � in ripped jeans paired with a flannel shirt
Britney Spears � in hip-huggers
THE MUSIC
�Forever in Blue Jeans,� Neil Diamond
�Blue Jean,� David Bowie
�Venus in Blue Jeans,� Jimmy Clanton
�True Blue Jeans,� Ramblin' Jack Elliott
�Texas Blue Jeans,� Carl Perkins
�Make-Up and Faded Blue Jeans,� George Jones and Merle Haggard
�T-Shirts and Tight Blue Jeans,� Divine
�Blue Jeans and Moonbeams,� Captain Beefheart
�En Blue Jeans Et Blouson D'cuir,� Salvatore Adamo
�Blue Jeans,� Yasmeen; Eddie from Ohio; Glen Glenn; Red Crayola; Keith Urban; Bikeride; Skyhooks; Bing and the Boys; Chocolate Milk; Marc Broussard; Blur; Franz Lambert; Jimmy Sturr
�Blue jean baby,� from Elton John's �Tiny Dancer�
Rachel Sauer/October 2002
Daily Press