Not Fade Away.

• Author: STEINHAUER, JENNIFER
• Position: History of blue jeans - Brief Article

Denim, that old standby, is back--if it ever left

Jeans are such a staple of the American wardrobe, it is almost impossible to imagine life without them. Although actor Marion Brando popularized jeans and a T-shirt as the uniform for young people in the mid-1950s, denim was used in the U.S. long before then, mostly in work clothes.

The history of the fabric is still debated among fashion scholars. It is widely held that the fabric sprang from the town of Nimes, France, where it was used to make tents. But a scholar at the Museum of Fashion and Clothing Arts in Paris has suggested that serge de Nimes, as the fabric was called, may have been made in England as early as the 17th century.

The genius behind fashioning denim into jeans was Levi Strauss, born Loeb Strauss in Bavaria in 1829. Strauss immigrated to the U.S. with his family in 1853, ending up in San Francisco. Together with a local tailor, who had been creating clothing with rivets for gold miners, he began manufacturing denim jeans in 1873. At the time, they were known as waist overalls.

Jeans were the sturdy work pants of choice until...