Jeans and Denim

Jeans have iconic status in the world of fashion -they have been popular for almost 100 years and have been worn by all kinds of people, from presidents to students.

Jeans came from the west of America and originally embodied a rugged attitude and were originally intended for robust use. In 1850, Bavarian immigrant Levi Strauss made work trousers with tent cloth during the American Gold Rush and sold them to gold diggers. They were appreciated for their strong cloth and well-fitting style. In 1874, metal rivets were nailed onto the corners of jean pockets for extra strength. Despite these working-class origins, in China jeans became synonymous with elegance, and sophistication.

When denim first came to post-reform China, in the 1980s, jeans were the first garments made of denim that Chinese people had encountered. Old people called denim "work cloth" because of its rough texture and whitish blue color. Slim-legged trousers of blue work cloth were popular in China in the early 1950s, when they were worn with yellow leather shoes and bright orange ankle socks by young college students. The texture of work cloth was finer and thinner than denim. Despite their similar colors, work cloth, with its even range of color, is referred to as "bleached", while the blue of denim is irregular. In the 1960s, work clothes were made in only a few colors and usually featured three patch pockets. This type of clothing was favored by engineers and workers. When conservative Chinese saw young people wearing denim jeans for the first time, they thought their behavior a little unruly, so they had negative attitudes towards the jeans they were wearing.

In the early 1980s, the American film A Streetcar Named Desire was shown in China. The brilliant performances of James Dean and Marlon Brando - while wearing jeans - shocked and inspired Chinese youths. The fashion for jeans spread rapidly in China, similar to the way jeans had dominated America in the late 1940s and 1950s. Suddenly, knowledge about the origin of jeans spread throughout China and before long even old people knew that they had come from the American West. In America in the 1940s and 1950s cowboys wore jeans and, as a consequence, jeans were denigrated in America too - for example, one insurance company publicly prohibited employees from wearing jeans because they were deemed to be worn by "vagrants". However, young people challenged these perceptions and the attitudes of the lead characters in A Streetcar Named Desire struck a chord. In 1957, an incomplete statistical survey carried out by the largest jean manufacturer in America, Levi Strauss & Co., found that sales of jeans had reached 150 million pairs. In other words, almost every American owned a pair of jeans. Twenty years later, by the 1970s, jeans had become popular around the world.

In colleges, jeans were loved by students at first, but were then also worn by professors. Painters, musicians, actors and journalists also embraced jeans, which seemed to embody modernity, youthfulness and aspiration.

After the 1990s, fashions changed rapidly but jeans seem to be immune to fashion cycles, remaining perpetually popular. As well as trousers made of denim, jackets, overcoats, skirts, shirts and bags were manufactured, and continue to be as popular as jeans.

But young Chinese have not been content to make do with just jeans. Influenced by the West, particularly by the punk movement, young Chinese people have copied the West and have made their own adaptations - burning clothes with cigarette ends, cutting them with scissors, tearing hems and trouser legs into broken edges - as expressions of rebellion. A popular cartoon depicts a young woman wearing a denim hat, denim jacket and jeans - an old person says, "Poor child!" and takes out 20 yuan so that the young woman can buy a new pair of trousers, but the young woman treats the old person with disdain and calls her "lame."

Jeans and clothes made of denim have been popular in China for more than 30 years - and they still are. The arrival of jeans to China was revolutionary because they made people look different and think differently about the outside world.