FIDM Museum Blog

Blue jeans

 

Blue jeans, almost universally shortened to jeans, are the archetypal garment of the twentieth century. The name itself comes from a textile used to make workwear trousers worn by sailors in sixteenth century Genoa, Italy. An inexpensive and sturdy blend of cotton, wool and linen, it was called Génes after the French name for Genoa. Génes was anglicized to jean when the textile was imported to England, where it was widely used and manufactured. Jean evolved and by the eighteenth century was made entirely of cotton and used primarily for workwear. Pants made from jean fabric were commonly referred to as "jean pants," the origin of the contemporary name.

Somewhat confusingly, today's jeans are actually made from denim, a sturdy cotton twill weave textile. More durable than jean fabric, denim might be an anglicized name for a French textile called serge de nîmes. It has also been suggested that a canny eighteenth century British manufacturer applied a French-sounding name to his indigo dyed cotton textile, hoping to improve its prestige.

Denim and the particular style of pants called jeans, relatively slim, ankle-length trousers worn for work or casual dress, converged in the early 1870s. A Nevada tailor named Jacob Davis designed and made a pair of work pants with riveted pockets. The pants, made from blue denim or cotton duck, sold readily. Davis realized that it would be necessary to protect his riveted pockets with a patent, but couldn't afford the $68 application fee. Davis wrote to Levi Strauss, his San Francisco based textile supplier, with a suggestion that Strauss back the patent. Working together, the two businessman applied for a patent for denim "waist trousers" with riveted pockets. The patent was awarded in 1873, and Levi Strauss & Co. began manufacturing the new product. Davis, the actual inventor of waist trousers, oversaw the Levi Strauss & Co. manufacturing facility.

Cut-off jean shorts
Levi-Strauss & Co.
1975-1995
Gift of Dorothy Washington Sorensen
2010.1110.390

Sonia Rykiel tunic and pants, 1970

The late 1960s controversy over mini, midi and maxi skirt lengths continued into the early 1970s. Though some designers began experimenting with longer skirts, women declared their loyalty to the mini. In 1970, a young Philadelphia woman spoke for many when she said, "I'll keep wearing the mini even if it goes out of style."¹ This loyalty to the mini caused confusion among retailers, who usually stocked their stores with versions of the latest runway offerings. As there was no consensus about which skirt length would be most fashionable, retailers didn't know what to offer their customers.

Perhaps in response to the hemline controversy, women began turning to pants as a fashionable alternative to skirts and dresses. Though pants had been considered appropriate for casual activities since the 1950s, in the early 1970s they began to move into the arenas of formal and professional dress. High-end restaurants, many of which had prohibited the entry of any woman wearing pants, relaxed their dress codes. Pants also began appearing occasionally in the workplace.

Tunic and pants
1970
Tunic: Sonia Rykiel
Pants: Unknown designer
Gift of Anonymous Donor
Tunic: 2003.40.11B
Pants: 2003.40.21

Masculine dress?

In the early 20th century, women who chose to wear bifurcated garments (i.e. trousers) outside of the gymnasium or off the playing field risked public censure. Though women had been wearing full, almost skirt-like trousers for sporting activities since the late 19th century, these bifurcated garments escaped condemnation only because they were functional, not fashionable. Full trousers of this type were often called "bloomers," after Amelia Bloomer, leader of a controversial attempt to popularize bifurcated garments as everyday dress for women during the early 1850s. Worn for activities such as bicycling, cricket, light calisthenics and swimming, bloomers allowed for freedom of movement, while obscuring the contours of the leg and lower body.

Bloomers
c. 1920
Gift of the Manlove Family
2006.870.76

Sonia Rykiel

Sonia Rykiel's signature garment is the striped sweater. Her earliest versions were shrunken, body-hugging "poor boy" sweaters with horizontal stripes designed in the early 1960s. The use of soft, knit fabric (often striped) became a trademark, earning Rykiel the title "Queen of Knitwear." Rykiel intended her knitwear to take shape on the body, so early in her career, she encouraged woman who wore her garments to forgo undergarments. When she opened her eponymous Left Bank boutique in 1968, it quickly became symbolic of the 1960s movement way from haute couture and towards youthful ready-to-wear.

Rykiel's designs from the 1970s and 80s often suggest silhouettes popular in earlier decades. Drop-waisted dresses similar to those seen in the 1920s were a particular favorite as were wide-legged pants. Though the pant and sweater ensemble below dates from the 1980s, it could have been worn by a daring woman of the 1930s or 1940s, such as Katharine Hepburn.

Wool knit ensemble
Sonia Rykiel
1980-82
Gift of Patricia G. Waldron, M.D.
2002.149.15AB

Menswear

Like many museums that focus on dress and textiles, the FIDM Museum is constantly searching for compelling menswear for our collection. Most 19th and 20th century menswear is relatively straightforward; it tends to favor function over form, resulting in garments without intriguing structural or decorative elements. There are, of course, exceptions to this general statement, as you can see from the late 1960s ensemble featured in our post today.
Smock-style shirt and suede Levi's
Both c. 1967
Gift of Jay Hampel
Shirt 2007.801.5
Levi's 2007.801.4

Beginning in the early 1960s, long-standing dress codes began to relax and even disappear. Women stopped wearing gloves and corsets on a regular basis, and men were seen in public without hats. Though sartorial expectations for both men and women became looser, men especially benefited from this change. Many men abandoned sober, dark-colored suits, plain dress shirts and constricting neckties in favor of clothing that was more personally expressive. All aspects of menswear were under assault: neckties were replaced by scarves and ascots, turtlenecks became an alternative to the button-down shirt, multi-colored shoes and sandals replaced black oxfords and hair grew longer. Color and pattern appeared in menswear, as did traditionally "feminine" fabrics such as velvet, satin and chiffon. As a whole, these changes in menswear were dubbed the "Peacock Revolution."

Men in urban areas such as Los Angeles, London and New York could purchase these new styles at boutiques such as Mr. Fish (London), and Paraphernalia (New York). Some of these boutiques catered exclusively to men, while others sold garments for both men and women. Gender specificity was no barrier however, for in 1968 WWD reported that men were purchasing women's wide-legged pants for their own use at the Yves St. Laurent boutique in St. Tropez.¹For those in search of an even more "authentic" look, vintage and non-Western garments could be purchased at flea markets, military surplus stores or while on the 1960s version of the Grand Tour through the Middle East or Latin America. Caftans were a popular travel souvenir for both men and women and were often reinterpreted, as in this beribboned smock-style shirt from the FIDM Museum collection. Back view of 2007.801.4 and 2007.801.5

Intended to be inventive and playful, these changes in the visual character of masculinity were widely understood as a challenge to political and social conformity. Furthermore, dress was conceived as a sort of costume which allowed one to try out or take on a new identity at will. The rejection of the staid business suit freed men from societal expectations regarding personal identity and allowed for a truer expression of the self. This sartorial liberation was thought to be both personally and socially liberating. In the words of a caftan and gold medallion adorned New York dentist interviewed in GQ in the March 1971, "Groovy people should wear groovy clothes. That way we turn on the whole world." 

1 Lobenthal, Joel. Radical Rags: Fashions of the 1960s.New York: Abbeville Press. 1990 :138.