Denim Facts…
As we’ve been covering autumn trends & colours over the past two fortnights I thought it would be interesting to share some facts about denim. Denim’s huge this season & once again this is what we’ll be seeing…
Denim culottes, midi and mini denim skirts, bell style jeans, straight jeans rather than the skinny style, denim overalls and play suits, large cuff boyfriend jeans and boyfriend shirts.
Apparently the lines are continuing to blur between men and women’s denim. Men are moving into fabrics with more elasticity, and women are embracing fabrics with less stretch. I always think of this as more uncomfortable due to the tautness, but my two recent pairs of boyfriend jeans (light & dark pairs) are proving to be very comfy indeed with little or no elasticity.
Although it’s a fact and I’m finding out, lighter denim ‘gives’ quicker and a little more than dark denim will. So we’ll see rugged-looking but rigid stretch denim, giving a more authentic looking jean that’s more popular right now, but still with all the comfort of stretch denim.
Jeans appeared more than 100 years ago and it changed shape, meaning and symbolism many times over. They meant hard work, rebellion and wealth among other things.
The name given to jeans in the early days was ‘waist overalls’.
Blue jeans became popular for the first time outside of the United States – WW2 American Soldiers wore jeans when they were off-duty.
Jeans were first coloured with indigo because the darker colour better hid the dirt.
Only a few grams of indigo are required for the colouring of each pair of blue jeans.
20 thousand tons of indigo is produced annually for the purpose of dyeing jeans.
Back in the 50’s blue jeans were banned at certain places like schools, theatres and restaurants as they were seen as a form of rebellion against conformism.
To eliminate the shrinkage, most of the denim fabric is washed in water after colouring.
Levi Strauss was German born Loeb Strauss and founder of the first company for manufacturing blue jeans. Born in 1829 in Buttenheim, he is the brainchild behind the legendary ‘Levis jeans’ along with Jacob.W.Davis.
The oldest known pair of Levis jeans were found in 1997 and were 100 years old.
The first label to ever be attached to a piece of a clothing garment was the red flag that was sewn next to the back pocket of Levi Strauss’ jeans.
Making of one pair of Levi 501s requires 37 separate sewing operations. boutique called ‘Limbo’ in the New York East Village was the first retailer to wash a new pair of jeans to get a ‘used and worn’ effect. It became a new fashion hit at the time.
