Blue jeans the U.S. national costume

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33580, 8 July 1974, Page 6

Blue jeans the U.S. national costume

Blue jeans have become for the American wardrobe what the hamburger is to the national menu: nothing very fancy, but something that most people cannot do without, writes Frederic Hunter in the “Christian Science Monitor,” Boston.

If one can believe manufacturers, the popularity of jeans continues its 100-year upward trend.

"They’re the national costume,” says Burton Kominick, marketing vice-president for Lee Jeans. Jeans have passed through the boom of the late 19605, when “flower children” wore them to “make a statement.” They are now weathering a period of being fashionable and. say merchandisers, the fad for items made from recycled denim — patchwork blouses and skirts, newsboy hats — is on its way out. But basic blue jeans are still in. Denim shortage “We’ve seen no peak,” comments a spokesman for the makers of Wrangler jeans. “We cannot make enough jeans to supply demand. We cannot get sufficient denim cloth.” Sales figures at Levi Strauss and Co., the foremost manufacturers of jeans, were $ll Im in 1964 and rose to $653m last year. A spokesman for the firm said: “People keep wearing them because they’re comfortable, durable and easy to take care of.”

Two years ago most customers bought one pair at a time, wore them out then bought more. Now they buy about three pairs if they find a style they like. “One day a woman bought eight pairs from us,” said

Rayette Coughlin the assist-ant-manager of a Boston store which specialises in jeans. Top price: $16.50 a pair. Miss Coughlin says her own wardrobe contains one dress, which she only wears around the house. She has four pairs of jeans — two pairs of low-cut bell-bottoms and two high-waisted styles with flap pockets. Highschool girls prefer straightlegged jeans, she says. Fashion-conscious women and men, who are caught up in what the trade calls the “peacock revolution,” pay as much as $9O for jeans imported from Spain. These are made from brand-new denim carefully treated to look like recycled cloth. Embroidered jeans from Finland sell for $BO. New York boutiques catering for the “beautiful people” sell women’s jeans outfits priced from $l5O to $3OO. Origins “Jeans” are named after the cotton pants worn centuries ago by Genoese sailors. “Dungarees” get their name from pants worn by workers at the Indian port of Dhunga. Denim cloth originally came from the town of Nimes (France) and was called “de Nimes.” The original American jeans, sold by the Gold Rush

dry-goods peddlar, Levi Strauss, were made of canvas. They met miners’ urgent demands for heavy-duty trousers. The company he founded has sold the classic straight-legged, button-fly indigo denim “Levi’s” since the 1860 s. A growing scarcity of denim could mean that decoratively patched jeans stop being a fad and become a necessity. Because of an increased demand for denim cloth “Levi’s” have gone up in price from about $8 a pair to $11.25 in less than a year. But if the worst comes, jeans could be made from canvas.