Jeans Get a Leg Up from Hollywood
Blue jeans sold steadily through the early 20th century but were still considered work clothes, not the all-purpose garb they later became. That began to change with the Great Depression of the 1930s, according to historian Carolyn Purnell, author of the 2023 book Blue Jeans. “Prior to the Depression, blue jeans had been firmly working-class garments,” she told HISTORY.com in an interview. “But denim companies quickly realized that workers and farmers struggling to feed their families weren’t in the market for new jeans. So, they pivoted their attention to middle-class Americans.”
That marketing strategy was aided, Purnell notes, by the popularity of Hollywood Westerns, whose horseback riding heroes often appeared in jeans (this despite the fact that actual cowboys tended to prefer softer, more comfortable pants). Jeans makers also doubled their potential market by introducing jeans tailored for women, such as Levi Strauss’ "Lady Levi's" in 1934.
Did you know? For decades, blue jeans came only with button flies. In 1947, Levi’s offered zippers for the first time, primarily to appeal to women wearers.
Jeans got a further boost when later movie stars like Marlon Brando and James Dean made them a symbol of youthful rebellion in movies like The Wild One in 1953 and Rebel Without a Cause in 1955. That scruffy image, in turn, spurred a backlash against jeans, often enforced through dress codes. While young people across the U.S. took to wearing jeans wherever they went, “many of their more traditional parents felt that it was inappropriate in polite settings such as school or work,” Purnell says.
Designer Jeans and 'Casual Friday'
Quite a few of those parents eventually gave up on trying to control their kids’ wardrobe choices and even took to wearing jeans themselves, at least on weekends. In the 1970s, fashion designers Calvin Klein and Gloria Vanderbilt, among others, put denim on the fashion runway, giving the formerly utilitarian garments the sheen of fashion—and price tags to match. In 1980, Klein amped up blue jeans' sex appeal further when he controversially featured 15-year-old actress and model Brooke Shields in a provocative TV commercial with the tagline, "You want to know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing."
Did you know? A pair of Kurt Cobain’s tattered blue jeans sold for a record $412,750 at a 2023 auction.
But the white-collar workplace still remained largely off-limits. “That only started to shift around the 1990s,” Purnell says, “once the idea of ‘Casual Fridays’ emerged as a way to raise company morale without boosting paychecks.”
Meanwhile, jeans had become a global phenomenon and a symbol of America’s cultural reach—for better or worse. According to Statista, today the denim jeans market is worth $75 billion worldwide.