Jeans: A Cultural History of an American Icon (review)

How is it that jeans evolved from durable work clothes into a global symbol of America? James Sullivan's new work surveys the history of denim wear, showing how "... a pair of blue jeans embodies two centuries of the myths and ideals of American culture" (3).

In indigo blue ink Sullivan presents twelve short chronological chapters, each focused on a central theme that reveals denim's evolving cultural significance. The work surveys the development of major manufacturers, production practices, styles and stylistic details, marketing strategies, wearers, and symbolic meanings. These stories intertwine, clearly showing how making jeans is inextricable from making myths about America.

Sullivan grounds his study in standard company histories, biographies of industry leaders, and the scholarly literature on work clothing and fashion history. To enhance the research, he visited a number of important company archives (including Levi Strauss & Co., Wrangler and Cone) and conducted interviews with an eclectic set of industry leaders and culture brokers. While myth often attributes jeans to Levi Strauss's invention of durable denim pants for miners, Sullivan explains that classic styles evolved simultaneously among a variety of regional manufacturers that both contributed innovations and borrowed ideas from their competitors. He argues that jeans are as mongrelized as the American melting pot itself, thus linking denim to classic metaphors of American culture. Similarly, Sullivan explores the relation of jeans to notions about the American frontier, youth culture, sexuality, masculinity, fashion, and race. Throughout the work he erodes myths of American exclusion, demonstrating that from the start and until today denim clothing has been a global affair. Sullivan produces an impressive synthesis that is original, informative, and engaging.

Jeans provides a much needed introduction to an extraordinarily rich and broad topic, one which claims its own Library of Congress Subject heading: Jeans (Clothing). Sullivan's work brims with information and anecdotes—the real things and real people that make jeans the real thing. Readers from the academy may long for some interrogation of the discourse surrounding jeans as well as attention to race, gender, and sexuality as constructs and categories of analysis. Every reader who has ever owned a pair of jeans will find insights from Sullivan's well-researched and entertainingly told story of jeans and American culture.