denim - Denim and modern culture

A popular clothing fabric made originally by filling indigo-dyed warp yarns with undyed cotton weft to give a twill structure. The indigo slowly leaches out of the fabric, causing a characteristic lightening of the blue colour. The fabric is hard-wearing, and was used for working clothes, but from the 1950s acquired a fashionable cult status.

Denim denotes a rugged cotton twill textile, in which the weft passes under two (twi- "double") or more warp fibers, producing the familiar diagonal ribbing identifiable on the reverse of the fabric, which distinguishes denim from cotton duck. Denim was traditionally colored blue with indigo dye to make blue "jeans," though "jean" denoted a different, lighter cotton textile. In 1789 George Washington toured a Massachusetts factory producing machine-woven cotton denim.

A similarly-woven traditional American cotton textile is the diagonal warp-striped hickory cloth that was once associated with railroadmen's overalls, in which blue or black contrasting with undyed white threads form the woven pattern.

The word dungarees, to identify heavy cotton pants such as overalls can be traced to a thick cotton country-made cloth, Dongari Kapar, which was sold in the quarter contiguous to the Dongari Killa, the fort of what was then known as Bombay (Hobson Johnson Dictionary).

Denim and modern culture

Since the mid-1950s denim jeans have consistently been favorites in American youth culture, but have changed style and significance throughout the years.

In the 1930s dude ranches became popular, and Easterners and city people saw at first hand the jeans they knew from movie Westerns. The tradition of wearing out former good clothes behind the plow disappeared from American life, as "work clothes" were marketed through Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward catalogs. (Flight suits and fatigues also became familiar comforts to American men.) In the 1950s a "biker" sub-culture among de-mobilized veterans of the Korean War, a tough ("butch") gay subculture in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, the blue-collar style of the Beat generation, widely-seen cult movies starring James Dean and Marlon Brando, and a spate of TV westerns independently made jeans a fixture of American life. Jeans were banned in many US public high schools, adding to their allure. In the 1960s young women began wearing jeans as well as men. In 1970 Elio Fiorucci showed designer jeans in Milan. In 1978 the first "designer jeans" came onto the US market, marketed under the brands Jordache, Gloria Vanderbilt and Sergio Valente. Seasonal novelty variations in jeans were marketed as "design statements". Jeans were being worn by Europeans who were not even radical students. In the Soviet bloc, young American tourists exchanged their jeans for valuable goods. As part of the 1970s "country" look, denim prairie skirts became fashionable, usually worn over lace or eyelet-trimmed petticoats. In the 1980s, tight stone-washed and acid-washed jeans were very fashionable. In the early 1990s, very baggy jeans were in fashion, due in part to the hip hop and urban culture (either originated in the graffiti scene, so that the writer could carry several cans, or originated in prison, as belts were not allowed to be worn since it can be used either as a weapon or to hang one's self. Expensive high-fashion jeans in the mid-2000s feature hand distressing and other finishing techniques to realistically mimic wear and flatter the figure through optical illusion and shading.

Denim has also been a traditional material used in England and Wales for many years.

Denim jackets (or jean jackets), originally worn by cowboys as an alternative to a cotton duck "chore coat", have also gained fashion status since the 1950s. Many pop-culture icons are closely associated with the denim jacket, including:

James Dean Deborah Gibson Status Quo Tiffany George Michael