From Workhorse to Wardrobe Rebel
Dear Jean-addict
There are very few items of clothing that can claim to have worked in a mine, ridden a horse, started a teenage rebellion, walked a fashion runway, attended a board meeting, danced at a music festival and ended up hanging over the back of a chair in almost every home on the planet.
Jeans can.
And perhaps that is why I find denim so fascinating – so ever-moving!
An it all started with a problem: trousers kept falling apart.
Jeans were not invented because somebody thought the world needed a fabulous pair of bottoms.
They were invented because workers needed trousers that could survive work.In the American West of the 1870s, miners, labourers and tradesmen were hard on their clothes. Pockets tore. Seams split. Trousers simply didn't last.
A tailor named Jacob Davis came up with an ingenious solution: reinforce the points that received the most strain with little metal rivets. He approached dry-goods merchant Levi Strauss, and on 20 May 1873, the pair received a US patent for riveted work trousers.
The blue jean was born: Not glamorous. Not sexy. Not designer. Just extremely useful. But most of all, almost indestructible.
In fact, Levi Strauss & Co. later used an image of two horses attempting to pull a pair of jeans apart to demonstrate their strength. That's what I call confidence in your stitching.
By the 1930s, jeans were already moving beyond purely practical workwear. Over the decades that followed, they travelled from farms, factories and workshops into everyday wardrobes. Cowboys wore them.Workers wore them. Women wore them.Teenagers wore them. Movie stars wore them. Musicians wore them. Artists wore them.
By the 1950s and 60s, jeans had acquired an entirely new personality. They had attitude. Think James Dean.Think Marlon Brando. Think rolled cuffs, motorcycles and teenagers who suddenly realised that dressing like their parents was entirely optional.
Then came the 1960s and 70s. By the way, I was born in 1967…
Jeans moved into counterculture. Hippies embroidered them, patched them, painted them, frayed them and wore them until they practically developed personalities of their own. Denim became associated with youth, independence, rebellion and freedom.
The workman's uniform had become a cultural statement. And this is where jeans become wonderfully ridiculous. Because what other garment gets away with being bleached, ripped, stonewashed, shredded, embroidered and printed on, and even bedazzled!
And still we still love them. We are still bedazzled by them.
Perhaps it’s the other way around: jeans remember us. A new pair of jeans is simply fabric. An old pair tells stories of knees that became pale. A wallet leaves its shape in a back pocket. The fabric softens where the body bends. The hems fray. A tiny paint mark refuses to disappear. There might be a tear from a garden fence, a splash from a studio, a faded patch from hundreds of afternoons in the sun or a stubborn mud stain.
Unlike many fabrics, denim becomes more individual the longer we wear it. Wear day go by on a solo holiday without needing to wash it… It records movement. It records use but it records life first and then belonging.
And then we put them at the bottom of a drawer.
This is the part I find interesting. A garment originally designed to be durable eventually becomes unwanted precisely because we have worn it for so long. It no longer fits. The style changes. The knees finally surrender. The zip goes. Or perhaps we simply buy another pair.
We tend to migrate with jeans migrate slowly towards that mysterious corner of the wardrobe reserved for clothes we don't wear but aren't quite ready to throw away. And there they eventually sit. Waiting.
Which brings me to Living Denim simply because their story cannot end in the darkest corner of a wardrobe. When I look at discarded, yet durable denim, I don't see an unwanted pair of trousers. I see colours and textures, faded blues beside deep indigos. I see seams, pockets, threads, frayed edges and hundreds of tiny variations created by wear. Most importantly, I see a material that has already lived one life—and might be quite capable of living another.
In my studio, reclaimed jeans are cut, pulled apart, layered, unravelled and reconstructed onto canvas. A trouser leg can become a shadow. A pale knee can become the highlight on a face. A frayed edge becomes fur. A seam becomes a line. Threads become marks. Pieces of fabric that might otherwise have been forgotten at the bottom of a drawer become part of something completely different. Not trousers. Not fashion. Simply Art. And I rather like the irony.
A fabric invented almost 150 years ago because people wanted clothing that wouldn't wear out has become the material I work with precisely because—even after we have finished wearing it—it still has something left to give.
So before you throw out that old pair of jeans…Take another look. They may have finished their job as jeans. But perhaps they haven't finished their story with me, yet...
Ilse du Plooy
Living Denim