 I want to start off by making sure that everyone can hear me if I stand back from the microphone like this. So firstly, thank you, of course, to the society for their generosity in supporting my research and, of course, inviting me today. I'd also like to thank all of you. This is quite an amazing turnout for coming out during your lunch hour. What I'm going to be talking about today is the exhibition that I organized at the Museum at FIT. It examines the history of denim in clothing, looking particularly at its relationship with high fashion, which is quite a changing relationship. And it looks at garments from the 19th century all the way up to the present. Now, I think for most of us, our experience with denim really comes down to jeans, the five-pocket riveted jean, one single garment. In my initial research for the exhibition, I came across the work of an organization actually based here in London called the Global Denim Project. If you're interested in denim more broadly, particularly what's going on in denim today globally, I really encourage you to look at their work. They estimate that on any given day over half the world's population is in jeans. This is a really staggering statistic. And they aptly point out that this positions denim in general, but jeans in particular in a quite unique position in clothing. It's the great equalizer. It's the one type of garment that you can see across ages, across genders, across cultures, across races. And with this extreme popularity, we get a popular history as well. Something that informs on all of us as consumers when we go and choose the cut of jeans we're purchasing, the brand even. And this popular history is riddled with images of Biker Rebels, Mylon Brando, James Dean, Brooke Shields and her sexy Calvin Klein's, the fashionable distress denim we see on the market today, and of course Cowboys Farmers. All of these different images really come to mind. When I was doing the initial planning for the exhibition, I knew that I wanted to offer a more nuanced view. Something that delved a bit deeper into the history of the garment, into the construction of the garment, into why this is such an important textile for us. And to do that, I really felt like I had to go back to the beginning. Now in many ways, the five pocket riveted jean, as we know it, as we still consume it, is a product of Levi-Strauss and Co., something we can trace back to them. And the Janet Arnold Award, which I was granted, enabled me to visit that company's archive, which is still housed in San Francisco, California. So this was quite a big trip. I spent four days in the archive there looking at historic garments, examining their construction, and also examining their vast holdings of advertisements. I'll talk a bit about the advertisements towards the end, I'll start with the garments. But I do want to stress that advertisements are incredibly important to understanding denim. James Sullivan, who wrote a great little book on jeans, which I encourage you guys to look at too, that in it he, I think, put it best that the jeans industry was the first industry to really realize that they were selling an idea as much as they were selling a product. And so you start to see a lot of mythology forming around denim, even from very early on, which we'll see sort of in a moment. Now, as a bit of background, Levi's is, of course, still a huge denim company, a huge source of denim around the world. You can go up the road, and there's a Levi's store right there to check out some of their recent products. But with Levi's, it actually originally started as a dry good store, founded by Levi-Strauss himself, and he was himself a German immigrant to the United States, who then went out to California, out to the West, to capitalize on the Great Migration during the California Gold Rush, selling goods, all sorts of things. The jeans came out of this Gold Rush. They were a garment he developed to feed the need of a lot of these men who came out to California just with the clothes on their back. They were not prepared for the work they had to do in the mine. And it was actually a joint endeavor. It was a garment he devised with a Nevada-based tailor, a man named Jacob Davis. Jacob Davis is the great forgotten figure of denim's history. The two of them together put on the market this denim work trouser. And the use of denim wasn't what made it unique. Denim was a textile that was first developed in the late 18th century. It was already present in workwear by the late 19th century, but in 1873, at the time of this patent you can see here, Jacob Davis and Levi Strauss took out a patent on a denim work trouser that had copper rivets placed at the stress points. So I'm gonna try to use the pointer. See, the copper rivets are really what we're having outlined in the patent here. And the purpose of these copper rivets was to reinforce the stress points, the pockets primarily of these jeans, the seams of the jeans, so that as you worked in the mines, as you were putting tools, heavy rocks even into your pockets, you could then be rest assured that they're not gonna rip, they're not gonna tear at the seams as all other trousers on the market were. And this was hugely important. Levi's became incredibly popular at the time because of this innovation. And the patent meant that they really didn't have any competition. As has been pointed out, Levi's had a particularly modern zeal for bringing lawsuits against people that attempted to copy this. And we see them continuing to have that zeal to this day. Turning now to the garments, though, that I saw. Here we have the first pair of historic jeans that I was able to see. This is an example of the first model of jeans initially called waist overalls, actually. They were called waist overalls up until the 1950s. The reason for this is that they were worn primarily over other clothing. They were a true workwear garment in that sense. They weren't quite large, sometimes over other day wear. And this particular model was initially called the double X model. Today we know it much more as the 501. It's considered to be the best selling garment of all time because it has been in continuous distribution since 1873. Now with this particular pair, we can see some of the elements of early Levi's jeans that have remained the same and also things that have changed. So a big thing I would like to point out first is the inclusion of a rivet at the base of the fly. This is something that was in the original patent. It was considered a stress point. It's something that apocryphally got removed when a late 19th century consumer stood a little too close to a campfire and the rivet conducted a little too much heat for his liking. In actuality, what I learned at the archive is that it was removed during World War II due to rationing and just was never put back in place. Other key things, key elements, we can see suspender buttons. Also the cinchback strap. So again, these were key elements for wearing them quite loose over other clothing. Also you can see that there's the leather label. As early as 1885, this is something that we see on Levi's still present today. Also you'll notice that we have one, two, three, four pockets. They're not five pockets yet. Most people think that when, you know, you say that originally Levi's trousers had four pockets instead of five, most people think it was that small watch pocket that was the last that got introduced, this one that sits on the inside just here. In fact, it was the second back pocket that was the last one to be introduced. Now looking at the garment, one thing that makes denim so important to so many consumers are what are called wear patterns. The wear patterns, you know, are these markings of white coming through. Now I'll mention this a bit more when I talk about the textile more in depth, but the wear patterns are something unique to denim because of the way the threads are actually dyed in denim. They're dyed through a process where the core of the thread is left white. The blue is only on the exterior of the thread. So that means that as you wear it, as you wash it, it begins to fade back to white. So that's what makes jeans begin to get these patterns, these markings. Now these markings are manufactured quite often today. You know, you'll go to a store, you'll buy pre-faded jeans that have whiskers around the fly, you know, that have different sort of points of stress. But here, these are all made from wears and with the distribution, the way that we have this long starburst pattern along the leg that reaches up into the thigh even, and also with these patterns as it goes down the calf, these particular jeans were likely worn by two wearers. And this also points to an interesting aspect of denim, denim's so durable, it's easy to clean. It often gets passed down, it often has multiple lives. It's often worn by multiple people. And so here we see that also likely they were hemmed at some point given that they probably had two different wearers at two different heights, who then left their own unique imprint. Now one thing on this particular pair of trousers is that they look in quite good condition for something that is from 1885. And that's because, unfortunately, in many people's views today, it uses filler. You can see these thread, the off-color thread here and here and here. Also again, here and here. This is a technique that used to be used quite a bit more in conservation to repair, quote unquote, a garment, where you repair the holes, the abrasions that appeared in the original garment. Now this is something that happened to these particular jeans before they came into Levi's archive. And it's something that's greatly discouraged in denim, particularly denim conservation today because it's thought that the wear patterns really tell the story, the history of the garment. So in contrast to the second pair that I saw, we can see much more readily some of these wear patterns, these literal tears, also the abrasions that you get across the jeans when they don't have any of this filler fabric in. Now again, like the previous pair that I showed you, we have certain elements that are distinctive to 19th century Levi's. We have the rivet at the base of the fly. We have suspender buttons. We have that leather label. We also though here have wear patterns that again show that two different people likely wore these jeans. In fact, this particular pair of jeans was found in a mine. This particular pair of jeans was found in the Calico Mine in Southern California. A lot of historic jeans are actually still sort of underground in this way where they're preserved in a cool, dry heat out in the desert. Clothing hates damp quarters, it hates heat. So having being underground in the desert was perfect for many of these garments that have been pulled out. One thing you can see much better, I was able to see much more readily on this particular pair of jeans than previous ones was the stitch work on the back pocket. This is 1890 when this particular pair of jeans was done. And what you can see is that, oh, do a, do a. You can see it much better here. It's got that distinctive double arch stitching that we still see on jeans today, this branded logo of Levi's. It's called its arcuit. It's the term that the company has given it. And I find this fascinating that already by 1890, Levi's was branding their clothing and his branding has remained a fixture and has also really shaped the denim industry as a whole. Every different, every company has its own way of marketing, of branding its particular object. Now in the late 19th century, sewing machines weren't yet developed to have two needles evenly spaced apart. Instead, you had single head sewing machines. And so you can see in the 1890 stitch pattern that the negative space between the two arches is different. It varies and that's because they were done with a single needle. Whereas by the time we get to this pocket, which is from the 1950s, we see that the space is uniform because by this point, we have a double headed sewing machine. We also see that Levi's has expanded their branding to include the red tab that we now see on labels today. So this is something that also is important for jeans in thinking about fashion, high fashion. Logomania branding, this is something so ubiquitous that we don't even notice it in clothing. But it really started here. It started here first. It started with denim. Another distinctive feature of this particular pair of jeans that I found very intriguing was this print on the interior pocket bag, one of the front pockets. It's stamped with a text that's celebrating Levi's 17th anniversary of their double X jeans. This is 1890. This is something we would expect much more of marketing today to capitalize on a heritage, to capitalize on celebrating this history of a company. And already, so young in the company's life, we're seeing a celebration of this heritage. And you can see also that distinctive double horse logo. You know, again, that appears on the leather label so much. This was first introduced in 1890, so at the occasion of this anniversary. The text goes on to identify the mill, the weight of the denim, so it's also in a sense making this garment a historic document. A lot of early Levi's paper documents don't survive very well. We have the patent, but we don't have a whole lot of other business documents, and that's because the earthquake of 1906 in San Francisco actually destroyed a lot of it. So instead, what we see here is how a garment can act as a crucial document, a crucial key to figuring out parts of the company's history. I'm gonna skip ahead a bit in time. The next garment that I was able to see was from the 20th century, but no less important and distinctive to the history of denim and particularly Levi's. This is a pair of women's jeans from 1935 called Lady Levi's. There's a popular myth out there that women's jeans didn't really start until the 70s, didn't really start until Calvin Klein, even sometimes people think. It was very much something that began in the 30s during what I like to call the dude ranch craze. And what we see here with the women's jeans is that they're very much an adaptation of that 501 style we've already seen. They have the same pocket placement, the same cinch back strap. They even have that same double arch stitching on the back pockets, but they're made to fit a woman's body. We can see that in the construction of the garment. The drop from the waistband that includes that center fly is much longer than a man's trouser. And also the circumference of the waist, it tapers much more so that a woman can wear it quite high on the natural waist. So it's taking this male garment, making it into a female version. And the reason for that is because of this dude ranch phenomenon in a lot of ways that it gains increasing popularity. Now what the dude ranch craze of the 1930s was, was a phenomenon that happened in tandem with the growing popularity of Hollywood cowboy films. This is the age when the cowboy becomes the mascot of denim. And that's really thanks to Hollywood. This is when Hollywood has its budding golden age and the cowboy film, The Hollywood Westerner is a key genre in that expansion. And the de facto uniform of the Hollywood cowboy is denim, jeans, Levi's 501s. John Wayne himself said that he only would wear 501s. So the romance of the Old West gets aligned with this figure of the cowboy right at the same time as the Great Depression really hits the West of America very, very hard. And so all of a sudden what we see is ranchers out West in states like Nevada, Wyoming, Colorado, they need an alternative source of income and they realize that they can open the doors to their ranches to wealthy East coasters, wealthy West coasters and offer their ranches as resorts, if you will, and offering a authentic cowboy adventure. And so what you see here on the screen is the first mention of Levi's in vogue. So all of a sudden now we're seeing jeans enter the fashionable discourse. And it's because of Dude Ranch and this vacation. It's an occasion type of dressing. We're not seeing denim as general day wear for the fashionable client, but it's something that has a specific purpose. It's no longer strictly coded as work wear where the purpose behind the advertisements, the purpose behind the construction is strictly geared towards that. It's a new consumer base. And in that vein what we can see inside the label of the garment is first a name, the owner of this original pair. This was actually found in the back room of a ranch. It was left behind by a woman who had brought them on her vacation and decided she didn't need them when she went back home. So she sort of forgot them. But underneath it you can see this other label, a retail label that says it's actually for Best and Co. Which was a Fifth Avenue boutique in Manhattan. Now it's often been suggested that Levi's really was something very much only sold on the West Coast, west of the Mississippi even before World War II. But what we see here is that the company at least had some sort of specialized targeted distribution to more fashionable clientele. And the fact that jeans are even sold in a fashionable department store is really something quite important. When I was planning the exhibition, I wanted to make sure that the Levi's 501 was really given a central place of importance because it does lead to so much in the history of Denneau. So here is a platform view of the entrance of the gallery space. This is the very first platform when you see that you see. The particular gallery space that this exhibition is in has quite stringent parameters. The biggest one being that we're only allowed to show objects from the museum's permanent collection. So unfortunately for this exhibition, I wasn't allowed to accept loans. So I couldn't get any of those fabulous Levi's pieces into the space of the exhibition physically bringing the object in. So what you're seeing here is the museum's oldest Levi's piece. We'll see some other older pieces. The museum has not by Levi's in a few minutes. This is the oldest Levi's piece. It's from, it's a pair of 501s from 1950. They're mounted on what's called an invisible mount of Fah shape and they're suspended in the center again to give it that primal central role. But I wanted to be sure to include this object-based research that I had at the Levi's archive. And so I included this through multimedia, through digital devices. So you can see an iPad just next to the space. This also gives a kind of tactile quality to the exhibition. Here you can see slides where, that I developed that visitors can flick through. They can see, compare and contrast the genes that they have on view. I mean one limitation that you have with a fashion exhibition in general is that you're only getting one side of the garment. It's quite difficult to sometimes have a 360 view in the exhibition space. And so with this, visitors could see the back. They could see the front. They could zoom in and zoom out on the garments. And I even highlighted specific elements that I had found in my research that I wanted them to really take away. But my research at the archive wasn't just incredibly important for my understanding of Levi's pieces in the collection. It also helped my understanding of some of the more historic pieces, not by Levi's. Particularly this pair of work trousers that we've dated to about 1840. They're primarily made out of brushed cotton or napped cotton. So it feels similar to modern day corduroy. But over both legs, we have these large rectangular patches of denim. These trousers are entirely made by hand. They're patched both on the inside and outside of the leg. Something we really don't see quite often in denim in particular anymore. This is very much going against that idea of distressing. This pair of trousers was mended. It was given many life cycles and it was kept for a very long period of time. And key indicators of its age when we went about looking at this garment, when I was first investigating it for the exhibition, there wasn't a whole lot of provenance attached to them. It wasn't made clear exactly when they were made, exactly who owned them. But key indicators of their age are particularly that fall front that you see in the front. That fall front that where the panel folds down from the waist. You can see it particularly well here. Also the inclusion of bone buttons instead of metal buttons. These are indicators of an early date. And even it might be earlier than 1840. We think that it's likely with this particular pair of trousers that they had many life cycles. They might have even originally been off white, sort of beige color. And then they were eventually dyed blue. But over time, as they broke down, as they began to form holes, they were handed down, patched, repurposed as workwear using denim, really showing the importance of denim's durability. And given a second life. We also even think that given some of the markings, and you can see this down here at the hem, that they also likely had stirrups. These are key indicators of gentlemen's wear, gentlemen's trousers of the much earlier 19th century. Here's some photographs really showing key examples. You'll see that with the fall front instead of the center fly, the center fly was really an innovation of the later 19th century and really popularized through companies like Levi's. That with the fall front you have the button securing, but then you also have buttons underneath to secure the pants even further. Now these trousers, they look quite foreign to us. These are just some examples from the earlier 1800s. And so we think that likely these trousers were maybe even made as early as 1810, 1820, but then eventually got passed down and were used for multiple decades. This is really quite something when we consider our use of clothing today, it's very disposable. There's not a lot of emphasis on mending and that's particularly true in denim. But as I mentioned, these trousers look quite foreign to us. They've got this very large yoke. It's very high rise for a men's trouser. And we can also see the indication that they once had laces, something we don't really see very much anymore. Again, this is something that would have been used to secure the trousers further at the waistband, make sure they didn't fall down. And these are elements that carry over into Levi's. These are elements that carry over into jeans, into denim, design in general. The use of the yoke, the use of the cinchback strap, it takes different forms in Levi's. But Levi's, the importance of that 501 means that as we get further into the 20th century, that yoke is a principal element of all jeans practically on the market. Framed by the top stitching, the proportion will be different based on whether it's for a man or a woman, high rise, low rise, which company, et cetera. We even see some very extreme experiments with the yokes. Here, for example, we have a pair of X pocket jeans, as they're called, from the Yoke. A pair of X pocket jeans, as they're called, from the French label, Métin, François-Jerbeau. Key kind of cult label of the 1980s, so I'm skipping way far ahead with this. But what we can see is with them, they're taking that yoke and having it go the circumference of the wearer's hips. And they're using it as a decorative element. They're using it as a quite provocative element too, here, with how we have the X pocket is for the way the yoke here intersects with the slash pocket, forming an X right around the fly where they've then placed their label quite strategically. So here we see elements of menswear, elements of these early workwear trousers coming in, becoming a fixture of Levi's, and then through Levi's ending up as a fixture of denim as we know it. Something that is so familiar to us that we don't even see it until you're really looking for it. But turning down more generally, this exhibition is really very much about the textile more broadly. It's not just about jeans, which is important to point out. So denim is, first and foremost, traditionally made entirely out of cotton. This is what made it so innovative. Traditionally, cotton was actually too weak to be used as both the warp and wet thread. Most reachers today think that likely it was actually a British invention, denim, because of the innovations in this country during the industrial revolution, the textile industry, the spinning genny. These things made cotton a much more viable thread so that it could be both the warp and weft thread of a woven textile. Now what that means is using entirely cotton means that all of a sudden, you have a garment that's much cheaper and it's very easy to clean as well compared to silk and wool and linen. And so all of a sudden you have this garment that's perfect for workwear in that sense, cheap, easy to clean. It's also what's called a twill weave textile. Now the weave structure of a twill weave is such that it ends up almost double layer. This means it's very stiff, it's very hard, it's very durable naturally. Now denim goes a step further. Denim is what's called a warp-faced twill. Now denim is traditionally made out of a colored, a dyed warp thread, most often blue, and then an undyed or white weft thread. Now with a warp-faced twill, kind of what you get from the name, the warp threads end up on the top or the face of the fabric, and then with the two layers, the white or undyed weft threads end up on the bottom of the fabric. And so when you flip them up, when you cuff up your jeans, you get these two different colors, the color variation. But again, this double layer, this is what makes a denim perfect for workwear, perfect for Levi's to use. It's stiff, it's durable, it's cheap, it's easy to clean. And this is an element we still see kind of being pervasive, but also being experimented on in the current denim market. You know, denim is no longer entirely made out of cotton. Now we get things like Lycra stretch going into denim. Now because the market isn't just geared towards workwear, the stiffness isn't something you necessarily want. Instead, you want stuff that's soft, that's broken down. And so this is where the finishing treatments, as they're called, really come into denim. Creating those artificial wear patterns that I mentioned before. Denim today, as opposed to in the 19th century, will often be pre-aged, pre-washed, before it reaches the market. The average denim product is actually washed about three times in large industrial machines with stones, stone washing, before it ever reaches consumers. So denim in the 19th century as a physical object was very different than what we think of denim today. And you do see raw denim on the market, and that's really what traditionally denim looked like. It can almost stand up on its own. It's so stiff. So even that tactile quality of denim really evolves over time and evolves with the consumer. I mentioned this a little bit earlier. The dyeing process of denim is also incredibly important. This image shows the interior, the dyeing facilities at one of the most famous denim mills in the United States, really in the world. It's Cone Mills White Oak Plant down in Greensboro, North Carolina. They're still in operation today. They're the exclusive suppliers, worthy exclusive supplier to Levi's for much of the 20th century. And what you're seeing here is the elaborate process that goes into dyeing very traditional denim. It's called long chain or rope dyeing. And as you can see in the process, you have a series of vats of either natural or synthetic indigo, depending on what you're working with. Most people work with synthetic indigo today. And then the dye is built up in coats and layers. The threads are drawn down into the vats of dye. Then they're pulled up in a process known as skying. And that is what over this repetitive process gets the deep rich blue color. And it also again leaves that core of the thread white. Now the reason you might kind of ask yourself, why is it yellow in the back? The reason for that is that it's kind of interesting that denim ended up blue in a way because indigo and cotton don't go together chemically. Their chemical compounds actually repel each other. In order to dye cotton blue, you have to put an additive into the dye. In this case, in the modern dyes, the synthetic dyes that we're using and in the technique developed in the United States, this is where the blue denim that we know is really a distinctive thing of the US in a lot of ways, the technique, the additives dye it yellow first then through the oxidization process as it oxidizes as you draw it up, that's what turns it back to blue. Then it goes down, it goes back through. And so that's why as it builds up, it's kind of a greenish hue, then it's darker and it's darker because each time the dye, when it first contacts the cotton, turns yellow but then the oxygen makes it go back to blue. So it's a very elaborate process. You know, this is another reason why for a long time, Japanese denim is really important today. They're one of the most important producers of denim in the world, really pushing the market very far forward. When they tried to copy Levi's, copy Lee, copy the things coming out of America, it took them a very long time to figure out how to do this process because indigo was something very much used in Japanese traditional methods of textile production and traditional clothing, but they used a totally different process where they devised a process where the dye saturated the entire thread. So when they tried to make denim at first, you didn't get the wear patterns. And the wear patterns are so crucial to consumers, to what people want out of denim, that this is a really key process. And here we have a great shot. Cone Mills is actually now trying to get back into natural indigo dye, you know, which is a big step forward. Again, it's kind of a move towards sustainability. And what we see here is a bundle of these threads that have been dyed with natural indigo. And you can really see how the core of the thread is left white, you know. So this is a really key property. I'm sorry, I hope I'm not going through these slides too quickly for all of you. One big misconception about denim is that it was first and foremost a menswear textile and then it made its way into women's wear. Now the jeans, the work trousers, they were a menswear garment and it's made its way into women's wear. But denim as a textile was a workwear textile, generally. It appeared in both men's and women's wear from the early 19th century onwards. So here we have a great example from the museum at FIT's Permanent Collection. This is a women's workwear jacket. We dated to about 1850, entirely made out of denim, entirely hand sewn and it has nothing to do with the five pocket riveted jean. It's its own garment. It's got its own history. It's got its own legacy. And it's very much in line with the fashionable silhouettes going on of the period. It's got tucks at the base of the waistband. It's got tucks at the wrist so that it will nip in and really kind of highlight the woman's natural waistline. It's the length of the coat as well will work perfectly with even workwear dresses of the period. That silhouette of garments that women were wearing in the mid 19th century is distinctive with this. We also see that same as the work trousers that I showed earlier on, we have an interest in mending, patching throughout the garment. So again, entirely different treatment of denim here. This was worn for a very long time. It was used for its durability. It was used for how easy it was to care for and how easy it was to mend and how long it lasted. With the women's wear pieces I have in the exhibition and they're all catalogued also in the book, with these pieces we see an alternative history of denim, something that kind of runs as a subtext to the jeans. You know, most people use denim as a term synonymous with jeans today, but they really are two distinct things. There's a history of jeans, but there's also denim. And so from this workwear garment we get of the 19th century, we have the first fashionable denim piece in the museum's collection. An incredibly early, very rare piece. And here it's not blue, but it is a warped face cotton twill weave textile. So very much all in line with the properties of denim. Here it's a stripe to denim and it's a fashionable day suit from the period of World War I. Now, the lines of it follow all the kind of trends coming out from Paris at the time. On the right is a sketch, a hood couture sketch that we actually have at FIT in our library and our special collections library. And you can see with the two that we're really following all the elements of the fashionable silhouette, that long tunic-like jacket, the silhouette of the skirt, the waistband, the position of the buttons, even the shape of the cuffs. It's almost exactly the same. In the piece that we have from FIT, obviously you can see the print of the textile. So the stripes are being used to create a decorative effect, alternating the orientation of the stripes, known as mitering. This creates a really important decorative quality, also key during the teens in fashion. The reason denim was probably used here is because of World War I. This is a bit of an anomaly in denim's history. During World War I, of course, there was a lot of rationing materials. Luxury fibers were very difficult to get your hands on, prohibitively expensive, even if you could. And so we see more durable materials like cotton really becoming key to fashion during this period. But again, as I mentioned, this is an anomaly. This is something very much circumstantial, the reason why we see denim kind of moving beyond workwear. Denim really doesn't move beyond workwear into more fashionable dress until about the same time as you mentioned the Lady Levi's, the 20s, the 30s. This is the key moment when denim branches out. And it's because of the development of a genre of clothing known as play clothes. Play clothes are incredibly important in the history of women's wear because during the 20s and 30s, this was the first time women were encouraged to be active and encouraged to exercise for the first time. So all of a sudden you have this group of affluent women, fashionable women who have no idea what to wear while they're doing these activities, they're encouraged to participate in for the first time. So a new vocabulary of clothing develops known as play clothes, specifically for this purpose. Here we have some great examples from the collection. I have included, which I want to point out about the exhibition. In some instances, I've included chambray, which is a relative of denim. It's what's here. It's got a blue or colored warp thread, a white weft thread. It's made out of cotton, but it's a plain weave instead of a twill weave. That means it's quite lightweight. The key thing about chambray is it was the perfect thing for shirts. It becomes the thing for work shirts in the United States. So to such a degree that blue collar becomes a euphemism for working class during the first half of the 20th century because of this distinctive fabric. The reason I include it in the exhibition is because consumers today tend to identify chambray as denim. Even retail ad copy will call chambray shirts denim shirts. You know, they really don't make a distinction but there is one even though their histories are very much aligned. The designer of this particular ensemble, this is a beach coordinate ensemble. You're meant to kind of wear all of these various pieces layered. You take them off at a day at the beach. It's made by a really important sportswear designer in America named Claire McCartle. Play clothes were very much an American invention, an American element, and they were really aligned with California as well, kind of like denim, the California lifestyle of play clothes and all these leisure activities. And so denim becomes particularly important for sailing for beach, even though I don't know that we would really want to wear denim to the beach today. And here I have a great example of advertising and catalogs going on at this time. This is again from FIT's collection and it's women's play clothes. It's from an early Abercrombie and Fitch catalog. Bit different than the Abercrombie imagery we see of later on in the 20th century. But it is promoting all these different styles and also promoting the activities you're supposed to do with them. The copy at the bottom, the text, it says what each different ensemble would be worn for. So it's also advising the consumers. Now to draw this back into my trip to Levi's, when I went to Levi's, I saw the garments, but I also saw the advertisements. And some of the advertisements really supported a lot of stuff that I knew about denim already, but some really surprised me. The period that surprised me probably the most was the period of the 1950s. So when most of us, most consumers think of the 1950s and they think of denim, they think James Dean, they think Marlon Brando, they think bikers, juvenile delinquents, rebel without a cause. And that's not surprising. That has been one of the most pervasive images in the denim industry. But because of all of those iconic cultural moments in the 1950s, denim became quite taboo. Denim was controversial. Denim was banned in schools. It was thought to lead to juvenile delinquency and rebellion. If you put on a pair of jeans, all of a sudden you were going to subvert authority. So all of a sudden it gets really panned in the press and in schools. And denim sales actually dip in the mid 1950s. And so what you see is the manufacturers, the companies, they change the tone. They change the conversation going on around denim. And they in particular found a group called the Global Denim Council. I'm sorry, not the Global Denim Council. The Denim Council. The Denim Council was founded in 1955 and I talk about it a lot in the book. We have the papers of the Denim Council at FIT which I was able to use in my research. And what they did is they tried to rebrand the textile. And so when I went to Levi's, I was really struck by how the vocabulary of their ads changes. All of a sudden in the 1950s, we see the company co-opting the visual language of play clothes so completely with these two pieces. They are 15 years apart. Levi's is looking to play clothes, looking to the pre-war period as a way to sell to a more family-friendly suburban audience. You can also see with the clothes that Levi's is making out of denim that they're looking at the products from the play clothes era as well. They're really constructing these pieces and changing the products that they're offering for a new clientele. One of the most striking examples that I found in the advertisements I saw at Levi's was this. In just my own research at the museum, I was familiar with this portrait of Claire McCartle. Claire McCartle, that important sportswear designer I mentioned just a few moments ago. Claire McCartle, this particular photo appeared of Claire McCartle in Vogue, photographed by Irwin Blumenfeld, a really important fashion photographer of the period. And it's one of the most famous portraits of her ever taken. And almost 10 years later, we see Levi's using the same device, the same composition to sell its California ranch pants. So completely co-opting, you know, not just the ads for play clothes, the catalogs for play clothes, but even the fashionable look of the play clothes designer translates into this new era for Levi's. And it's completely different than what we would think Levi's was doing during this period, maybe. And here again, going back to this ranch pant that I mentioned just a second ago, the ranch pant was just a pair of jeans, but they're not jeans, they're not waist overalls. They're a ranch pant, again, aligning itself with the romance of the Old West. But the cut of these garments from Levi's, it's completely different. This was a pair of Levi's that we had in the collection at FIT. I didn't necessarily understand the significance of them. I couldn't find anything really sort of in more broad research about the ranch pants until I went to the archive. And they're full of advertisements, documents about this particular pair of jeans. And we see that it's a much more fashionable fit than what we saw with the Lady Levi's. It's got little pearlescence buttons on the top. It's got a side zip. And the Lady Levi's actually was discontinued during World War II. The ranch pants were their incarnation after the war. So it's telling that after the war, they didn't wanna go back to a product that looked like 501s. They didn't wanna go back to a product that reminded them of the rebels of juvenile delinquents, et cetera. They wanted something more fashionable, more fashion forward. And so, again, really showing the influence of the fashion industry on the denim industry in this way. And even with the imagery that you're using, aligning with that post-war suburban ideal we see in America at the time. And so here we have a great juxtaposition of the ranch pants with Lady Levi's ads. So the Lady Levi's were really made for women to wear while out on the ranch, to wear while they were engaging in different activities. And we're really aligning with the figure of the cowboy. Of course, now we see that it's completely changed as we get into the 1950s. Again, when I went to integrate what I learned at the archive into the exhibition space I turned to multimedia elements. So I was able to include images that I took at the archive of the historic objects and also advertisements. And again, down here in the case I've included that original Vogue issue that mentions Lady Levi's for people to see. And then we do have a pair of the ranch pants but then also this cross-section of play clothes from the period as well. And it is important to mention the play clothes were actually something for men as well. We most often talk about it for women but it was a period when both men and women were encouraged to be active. And so you see here a sort of denim style for men, for fashionable men. That also has nothing to do with that five pocket riveted jean. It's a distinct element. Now turning to the advertisements. As I mentioned, advertisements are key elements of any denim company, any jeans company. In this particular case, we see how much the marketing strategy, the dialogue around denim changes in a hundred years. So initially, all the imagery about Levi's waste overalls is that they're work garments. They're work garments to be promoted for their durability, their ease of care. So their original slogan was that they never rip, they never tear, I wish they did now. And of course, they were even guaranteed not to rip, if you can believe it. They were guaranteed you could get your money back in some of these ads if your jeans ripped. You could take them back, show it to a sales clerk and he would just give you a brand new pair. A hundred years later in the 1990s, we see a complete reversal. Now your jeans are guaranteed to shrink, wrinkle, and fade or your money back. So the consumer ideal, the reason they're buying jeans, it's totally different. It's a completely different consumer base. And it's fascinating to me also to see that even though the tone has changed, you do still see that interest in the heritage of the brand. You see the fact that they're using the historic imagery still to sell the jeans. So going back to that pocket bag that I showed you towards the beginning of the talk, we see that that interest in really marking a heritage, marking the history, continuing on throughout. And of course we still see that in Levi's ideology today. A lot of the images I saw didn't necessarily surprise me. They reinforced some things that I had sort of read or seen in other parts of my research. But I do particularly want to emphasize this moment in the 1930s when the cowboy becomes the image of denim. Because this is something that continues to today. It's probably one of the biggest associations we make with denim. This is image of the American cowboy and that romance of the old West. And it really is something very much promoted through the advertising of companies like Levi's in reaction to those Hollywood films. And I do also like how the images are unisex in a lot of instances. They use both women and men in these cases. And in a recent discussion I was having with someone about these ads, one thing that I really kind of took away from it is that these pieces are also kind of ambiguous. On the one hand they're saying an old West custom. So you see it and immediately you connect it to whatever cowboy film you might have seen on the weekend. Talking about the 19th century, the railroad, the old West, the Wild West, et cetera. But at the same time it's ambiguous. This could be depicting people out on the ranch today. All of the images could be advertising for ranch hands, for people working on the ranch, for people going to the ranches. But they also could be historic images. There's kind of a push pull in that sense. So again, emphasizing a heritage, but also expanding on that and bringing it to the present in these pieces. Some ads that I saw really surprised me. This one in particular, this is from the mid 1990s. Now the phenomenon of sagged jeans is something I do just want to touch on for a moment. This is something still considered quite controversial, particularly in the United States. As a point of reference, I'll go back to the other one in a moment. Got this billboard. This was taken in 2010 in Brooklyn. On the side of a building. So the style of wearing your jeans sagged around the hips, as you can see here, exposing the tops of the underwear. This is something that first starts to emerge in the late 80s, gets increasingly popular as we get into the 1990s. The popularity growing in tandem with hip hop music. Of course the style, as I'm sure we're all aware, gets very quickly associated with negative connotations. Prison culture, gang culture, these are the connections that we really make today. And that connection is so strong that in the United States, in certain counties, in certain states, this is actually outlawed. You can be fined up to $500 for wearing your jeans sagged in this way. But in 1995, about Levi's was using this to sell their 501s. This isn't a different style of jean. This is the same 501. And Levi's still does this up the road. It's one model of jean, but you can buy it in different sizes. Do you want to wear it loose? Do you want to wear it tight? Do you want the boyfriend fit? These are all things that are just about the proportion, the size that you buy. And they're promoting that as, you know, that way to individualize it to yourself in your own personal style. But here we see a quite problematic thing, I think, with the company and also with jeans. You know, this way of wearing jeans is outlawed. And the fact that in the United States, we're still at a point culturally where we find it acceptable to ban a particular way of wearing a garment that all of us have in our closets, I think is kind of telling. It says something, you know, and it's a bit of food for thought. So with these images, with these ads, again, as I went into the exhibition and planning the exhibition, I wanted to make sure that they had a place in there too. It wasn't just about the objects. It was about the advertising surrounding them. Because again, it's such an important aspect to the history. So you can see that I did include them framed on the wall so that when we see the 501s, it's not just about the history, but also thinking about, not just about where it was in the 19th century, but thinking about where it's ended up as we get into the 20th century. Yeah.