Powdered wigs.  Top hats.  Bell bottoms.  Hoop dresses.  The list goes on. 

What seems like a popular fashion today may only be a short note in the history books tomorrow.  Fashions change with the time, and they have been doing so for centuries.  But you don’t have to go back to colonial times to find how clothing choices have evolved.  Just consider the “big hair” of the 1980s, which nowadays is reserved for Halloween parties.

 

Like always, the fashions of the 21^st century vary depending on the situation.  In a casual setting, it seems that most young men and women prefer to settle for blue jeans and a T-Shirt.   But wait a second—blue jeans?  They’ve been around for over 150 years.  In fact, they are about the only fashion statement that hasn’t faded with the times.  Let’s take a look at how it happened, and try to get a little “historical perspective.”

           

In 1850, Levi Strauss was just one of thousands who ended up in California as a result of the recently discovered gold.  Strauss had grown up in Germany, but had moved to New York City just a few years earlier.  He moved to California, not so much to find gold for himself, but because it was a great opportunity to sell his dry goods to the surplus of new settlers.

           

When he got there, Strauss quickly learned that the miners were in dire need of a good pair of pants to work in.  He took the hint, and used some fabric to put together some work jeans.  They were a big hit, but didn’t score high in the comfortable department.  That problem was fixed, however, when Strauss came up with a new fabric—denim.  Thus, blue jeans were invented.

           

Everyone who was doing serious labor soon found out that blue jeans were durable and maneuverable.  They were perfect for the farmer who was working in the fields, or the cowboy who was riding a horse. 

 

Even if there wasn’t work to be done, wearing blue jeans was just downright comfortable.  They began to become a part of daily attire.  In the 1940s, during the midst of World War II, soldiers would take blue jeans to wear when they were off-duty.  All of a sudden, they became an international hit, and other companies besides Levi began to take advantage of the worldwide trend.

           

In the 1950s, not only were blue jeans useful and comfortable—they were “cool.”  Actor James Dean, who starred in the 1955 movie Rebel Without a Cause, turned blue jeans into the mark of the rebel.  With little exception, they became a standard piece of clothing for all teenagers.

           

The jeans continued to be the clothing of choice during the 1960s when rebellious young, “hippies” and Vietnam War protesters started to paint or embroider their blue jeans.  At the same time, the pants became a mark of Western Culture, and were in heavy demand in the isolated communist nations of Russia and Eastern Europe (where they were very hard to come by). 

           

Who says that fashions change with the times?  Today, blue jeans are still a common item of clothing in the United States and beyond.  But they are not the same jeans that were being worn during the Gold Rush.  Clothing companies spend millions of dollars making sure that they keep up with the changing styles of blue jean wearers (loose or tight fit, dark or faded, shorts or pants, etc.).