Jeans: A Polemic

 Larry King Is a Walking Public Service Ad for the Pitfalls of Denim.

     "There are only two actions I cannot tolerate.  The first is denim.  The other is murder.  If denim is not wrong, nothing is wrong."
- Sebastian Horsley

     I do not wear denim.  I do not wear jeans.  This is offensive to many of the people I know.  When asked when I will start wearing jeans, my facial expression generally provides the answer:  I will not.  Like vegetarians, I am then asked to justify my decision to abstain from jeans.  I don't really have an answer beyond "I don't like them."  This answer is rarely sufficient as it generally prompts a denim-themed homily.   To avoid such sermons, my answers have become increasingly creative.  For example, when I see the inquirer is wearing "selvedge denim" or "raw denim" with the cuffs rolled up, I will generally make something up about how the indigo dye is made from otters' blood, or how entire rainforests have to be torched to make room for industrial otter blood farms.  Here, then, once and for all, I present my full answer to why I do not wear jeans. 



     It is the 19th century.  In the André family mill of Nîmes, France - a city best known for having civilization brought to it by the Romans - sits a shabby, dim-witted weaver.  One of his superiors hands him a bolt of indigo-dyed cloth from Genoa, Italy and asks him to replicate it.  He is instructed that the fabric is called "gene," after Genoa, and it is all the rage amongst Genoese sailors.  The weaver stares blankly at the corduroy-like cotton twill for a while.  As he continues to stare, his mouth falls just slightly open, as it tends to do, and he begins breathing audibly.  Notwithstanding his limited faculties and vulgar mind, he begins pumping away at the loom.  Several weeks pass.  "Voilà!" he groans.  He proudly hands his bastard cloth to a superior, and it is painfully obvious he has not done what was asked of him.  His superiors are surprised that this is what he's managed to produce after so much time.  Happy to make a franc, they shrug and decide to market this macaroni picture frame of a fabric as "serge de Nîmes."  Eventually, the name is shortened to "denim."

     A few years later in 1871, a distressed housewife sits in her Reno, Nevada home.  She is preoccupied, and cold.  Her husband, pantless, weeps softly in the adjacent bedroom.  She decides to take a trip to see Jacob Davis, a local tailor who primarily makes wagon covers and tents.  She explains that because her husband is so astoundingly fat, there are no ready-to-wear pants available in his size.  As such, he has been unable to go outside and chop firewood for the family.  Mr. Davis asks that the husband come in for a measurement, but the wife declines claiming he is ill.  Mr. Davis then instructs her to take some (a lot of) string and tie knots around his waist for measurements.  She does, and Mr. Davis orders a bolt of duck cloth from the San Francisco dry goods shop of Levi Strauss.  As Mr. Davis is putting the finishing touches on this extra-huge pair of pants, he spots some copper rivets originally intended for attaching straps to a horse blanket, and fastens them to the pockets for enhanced durability.

     19th century Reno quickly decides these pants are the new "it" thing, and Mr. Davis has more orders than he can handle.  He soon begins fashioning them out of denim instead of duck cloth, and they are so popular he becomes concerned that someone is going to steal his design.  He asks Mr. Strauss, who is more established in his business, to help him file for a patent.  They do, and name Mr. Davis's frankengarment "jeans."

     The denim jean's popularity spread.  It was worn by coal miners, factory workers and laborers all over the United States for upwards of 80 years.  As these things go, a shabby fashion was co-opted by some cool people and they became popular.  Most people who care about this sort of thing point to James Dean's character in the 1955 film "Rebel without a Cause"as the galvanizer of the jean's popularity.  Because God's justice is swift, James Dean died that same year.

     In sum, when you wear jeans, you are wearing a French bastardization of an Italian fabric created by a family whose name is most widely associated with fizzy garbage wine.  You wear a garment that was first intended for a man so fat, his wife went to a tentmaker who in turn applied techniques used for making horse clothes to fill the order.  You wear a garment, not from San Francisco as the conventional mythology goes, but from freaking Reno.  You wear a garment that has rivets for no other reason than a tailor's concern that this man's pants were literally going to explode off of his body.  That was real; there was actually a chance of that.  There is no uglier story in the history of humanity.

     I append the following exhibits in support of my argument:

New rule:  If any clothes you own appear on a beanbag chair, you have to destroy them.

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     Speaking of destroy, it seems that denim is uniquely positioned as the only fabric that is ruined on purpose all the time.  This might be some kind of subconscious admission of its true value.

Not even this guy can make intentionally torn jeans look good.

This is called "acid wash" because you would have to bathe in
hallucinogens to find it acceptable.

 Here is Karl Lagerfeld sporting some "whitewashed" jeans. 
Can people stop trusting this man?  He looks like a poisoned toddler who stole
his mother's jewelry, father's formalwear and grandmother's sun glasses.

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     Then there are the various fits and styles, none of which are particularly appealing.

Behold, the newly popular skinny jean.  Expertly paired with the equally popular fat cock.  This is unforgivable.

In the extreme alternative, here is the jnco jean worn by the strapping young lesbian on the left.  This jean channels all the imperial majesty of Qing Dynasty robes without any of the nice parts.

Then there is the "fitted jean" traditionally paired with a white

button-down shirt, blazer, and smug expression that screams
"I will fuck your wife to death."