In the year 2014, global analysts valued the international jeans market at $58 billion and growing. What was once considered a simple solution for weak work wear, has since morphed. It went from functional to a more fashionable clothing.
At times, denim has been a symbol of rebellion, and even a national icon. In some cases, it has become an international symbol of independence.
Today’s hypermodern denim fashions are downright silly at times, but the stranger applications of denim can’t shake the proud heritage of America’s fabric. (In case you didn’t know, America created the best application of denim: jeans.)
A sturdy pair of blue jeans remains one of the most reliable forms of work wear, an idea that extends beyond our borders into the rugged environments of hard-working people everywhere in the world.
It all started with a simple but perfect weave of cotton…
Basket Weaves Made Simple
Like watching a sport where one doesn’t know the rules, weaves can get boring quickly. It helps to understand a little about what’s going on to understand what makes denim so doggone exciting.
Two key terms are warp and weft. [Think: longitude and latitude lines.] The warp threads in a weave are the vertical threads, like longitude lines on a map.
If you ever watched someone work with a loom (A.K.A., the weaving set up in the photo above) to make a rug, blanket or some other homemade textile, you might recall they had some parallel threads stretched away from their hips. Those would have been the warp threads.
This is a counter-intuitive name for threads which do not warp in any way. In a loom, warp threads are straighter than arrows.
Don’t worry if you’ve never witnessed any of this first hand. You can use your imagination or check out this picture:
Note weft sliding through the warps threads, in and out like a car driving around cones, except it’s going under and over versus left and right. The warp is also weaving under and over each successive weft thread. This is a basket weave.
A standard duck, which is the type of weave you see above, alternates the weft under then over the warp threads. A linen shirt, like the sort one might wear on a boat cruise or on a sandy beach, is an example of linen duck.
Canvas, like the type found in some shoes, is a type of duck or a simple basket weave.
Denim, like a smooth step on the dance floor, cuts under at least two warp threads each time, then staggers that move on the next pass through. It’s still woven like a basket, but fancier. The end result is a tough-yet-flexible weave or more specifically, what we call a twill.
Denim’s Roots
Many folks know that Levi’s take the credit for bringing blue jeans to the market, but Levi’s brand of blue jeans wasn’t the first. Those were made in Nevada by a man named Jacob W. Davis.
We’re gonna come back to Davis and Levi’s, but first, we have to reach back a bit further in history to 17th century France.
There was, as there is today, s a town in the south of France called Nîmes. It was this town that popularized a fabric called serge, which has a similar twill as denim. Serge is the great grandmother of denim.
If one takes the name, serge de Nîmes (serge from Nîmes), then drops the serge, and pronounces the other two words quickly, we get something that sounds like “de-nim.”
Blue Jeans
In the 1800s, around the mid-late 1800s, there were already pants called jeans. The word “jeans” is an anglicized version of the town in Italy where jeans came from, Genoa, Italy.
Early blue jeans, were simply trousers. In other words, Genoa created trousers. The general term for trousers became jeans, meaning those swanky Italian pants.
The blue part came in when textile manufacturers started dying the warp threads with indigo-colored dyes. As with today’s true blue jeans, they left the weft threads white, so one side appeared whiter, and the other bluer.
The core of the warp threads remains a white thread, something which is exposed over time… thus the faded look with wear and tear. With enough wear and tear, the warp threads will break, creating some cool effects sometimes called slashing.
As a rule of genuine blue jeans ownership, one should never actually slash her jeans with a knife of scissors. That’s something called “posing.” [read: not cool]
The Birth of Levi’s
To get to Davis, the creator of blue jeans, we have to talk about Levi’s Strauss & Co. Before they were the company who branded the best workwear pants ever, they were a dry goods supplier.
Levi was one of many Strausses, but he was the one who moved the family brand to the new country, America.
When Jacob Davis made the first pair of jeans, sometime in the 1870s, it was in response to a request for something stronger than the existing options. He grabbed some denim fabric, and a handful of copper rivets, which he pushed through the fabric in key points to reinforce the pants. The result was a very sturdy pair of blue jeans.
The requests for more blue jeans came in faster than Davis could respond, so he contacted his supplier to make a business deal. They liked what they heard, giving birth to the Levi’s Strauss brand of work wear.
The rest, as they say, is history.
The Bizarre World of Denim Today
James Dean takes credit for popularizing blue jeans in pop culture. He might not have started the rebellion, but when he donned a pair of blue jeans in the 1955 movie, “Rebel Without a Cause,” that was all we needed to go blue jeans crazy.
Today, one can buy fashionable denim, which may stretch or come in non-traditional colors. Some of these may even be decent quality denim, but nothing will outperform a pair of denim pants made for work.
Pre-stressed jeans don’t have the wisdom found in a pair of retired workwear blue jeans. The sort of jeans you’ll find in All Season’s Uniforms catalog are jeans one’s kids can inherit like a fine wine collection. They get better with age.
A true fan of blue jeans would never apply an iron, slash or otherwise alter a solid pair of blue jeans beyond regular wear and tear. That would be an insult to Jacob Davis and Levi Strauss.
North American buyers still dominate the market, but Western Europe and Asia markets continue to grow every year as they attempt to emulate western culture.
Levi’s is no longer the biggest brand out there, but that’s okay. The beauty is how the indigo dyed warp threads of blue jeans weave through nations in a quiet international statement of global unity. It’s almost patriotic.
Of course, All Season’s Uniforms maintains a variety of denim workwear options in women’s and men’s styles. If you wear blue jeans for your job, count yourself lucky in more ways than one. You’re not only wearing a comfortable piece of American history every day, you’re wearing a piece of world history.
About the Author
Nick Warrick
Nick Warrick is the Sales Manager at All Seasons Uniforms. With over 15 years of experience in the work uniform business, he has worked with hundreds of clients across 20 different industries. Holding bachelor’s degrees in both Business Administration and Information Technology, Nick revamped the company’s online presence, offering its customers a new uniform shopping experience.