Jeans

Since the 1960s, jeans have been identified with a wide array of roles in consumption practices, in articulations of popular cultures as well as in social theory and research. In fact, as a garment, jeans invite different forms of reflection when discussed as a nineteenth-century work outfit, as a stylization motif of American middle-class lifestyle, as a cold war counterculture outfit, as a high fashion item, or as an ubiquitous and complex manifestation of twenty-first-century global consumption. Indeed, few types of garments compare with jeans as an everyday outfit of such an intense global use.

The materialization of jeans as a distinct garment and product can be mainly associated with Levi (originally Löb) Strauss, a Jewish immigrant from Bavaria. Strauss arrived in San Francisco in 1853 ...