Despite how advertisers keep treating as a new and exciting clothing, jeans, and the denim they are made from, have been around for hundreds of years. Blue jeans are named after their place of first import, Genoa, Italy, and denim comes from the material serge de Nimes, a cotton blend from Nimes, France. Materials for jeans arrived in the America almost right after the Pilgrims did. Denim jeans have been part of the social and manufacturing landscape for so long that they seem almost ineffable. James Sullivan’s Jeans, however, goes a little deeper into the history of jeans to find a chronicle of rebellion and globalization.

Sullivan looks at denim jeans in their cultural context, seeing jeans as a symbol for other stories and feelings. From Levi Strauss’s initial pair of jeans in 1853 to help manual laborers in San Francisco to Brigham Young’s denunciation of jean-wearers to the youth rebellions of the 1950s, jeans seemed to exist in the past to show one’s ideals. Lately, not so much. While a fair amount of the book is devoted to Strauss’s company and each generation’s use of jeans, there are far more interesting tidbits sprinkled throughout. Sullivan looks at blue dye manufacturing in Nigeria (even the ink in the book is blue) and the specific advertisement of jeans. All in all, it’s a good book that provides an interesting perspective on an often-overlooked object. ( )

What is good in this book is great, but I think a few things should have been added.

I'd give it a couple of stars just for the loving detail of having printed it blue on white. It is a very interesting history. It is all the more informative because Sullivan gives alternate versions of various stories, instead of simply selecting the one he prefers. In addition, he mentions that he is slightly skeptical of some "official stories" without actually calling the source a liar. He has obviously spoken with or researched a large number of people involved in the industry. There is a lot of detail about various companies, although Levis gets the most space (as is appropriate.) Sullivan begins with forerunners of jeans, different fabrics, and traces the shift in usage from working people, to youthful rebellion to deisgner jeans.

There is one thing missing in this history, in my opinion, and I admit that this is a self-serving pet peeve. Having been born in 1953, I am tired of having the baby boomers all characterized the the oldest members of the set. The Baby Boom lasted until 1968 - some of the youngest "boomers" are the children of the oldest. I can just imagine what people younger than myself think. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, when I was wearing jeans, the sense of rebellion had pretty much died out. Oh, the rebellious still wore jeans, wearing jeans wasn't necessarily a sign of being rebellious. I'm sure there are exceptions, but the adults of most of my peers accepted jeans as the costume of the young without much protest, even though most of them didn't wear jeans. That battle was fought and won by the slightly older. The issue was less blue jeans per se than the issue of formality in dress. We couldn't wear jeans to high school, but women also couldn't wear any type of pants, including a split skirt or culottes. I don't think that jeans were quite the sex symbols that they became with designer jeans. They were rather androgynous and partly symbolic of sexual equality. Some people wore them as an alternative to gendered clothing. If you're not sure what that meant, try reading Susan Brownmiller's Feminity. I'm not saying that wearers necessarily succeeded in avoiding cultural norms of looking sexy, just that it was sometimes their intent.

My other problems are with some of the details. Sullivan doesn't clearly define a lot of terms. While I appreciate his explanation of denim/jean/dungaree and how they came to be confused, a little more detail would have been nice. When Sullivan says that denim differed from jean in being a tougher twill, does he mean that denim was a twill and jean was not, or does he mean that both were twills but denim was tougher. I think he should have defined more of his fashion terms: there weren't so many that it would have been burdensome. I imagine that a lot of people think that "calico" applies only to fabrics with small figured prints, in which case the description of "dungaree" must have been a surprise. And what is a a "broken twill" or the various leg styles? One, which was called a something like a "Dickie-leg" (its not in the index), is completely unfamiliar to me.

Another odd thing about jeans, which I don't think Sullivan touched on, is that they are a "neutral" color. People will wear blue jeans with colors that they wouldn't combine with a pair of slacks that were the same color.

The index is good, but as illustrated above, could have been a bit more detailed.

A few complaints, but overall a very good read and a useful book on popular culture. ( )