Eco-friendly treatment for blue jeans offers alternative to controversial 'sandblasting'

Eco-friendly treatment for blue jeans offers alternative to controversial 'sandblasting'

I saw this article in a post on Facebook. It talks about the denim jeans that have become mainstream, all soft and broken-in the day you buy them. Quite unlike the jeans my generation bought when we were kids.

It was about 1970 when dress codes in public schools were relaxed. Up until then, girls wore dresses and skirts while boys wore slacks and button down shirts. No one owned a pair of Levis, unless you lived on a ranch and needed them for work.

Blue jeans were invented in 1850s California, by Levi Strauss. He'd moved to San Francisco from the east coast to open a dry goods store. The Gold Rush created a demand for supplies, and Strauss saw opportunity. One prospector visiting his store told him, "You should have brought pants." He complained that he couldn't buy any that would hold up as he worked the soil.

Strauss first tried making them using tent canvas, but that fabric was so stiff the customers complained of chafing. He did some research, and discovered a fabric from France called "serge de Nimes" that was the twilled cotton cloth we call denim. At first the pants were a overall-type, not becoming the classic "jeans" until about 1920. Over the years, rivets were added at stress points for strength, a pocket stitching evolved to identify the brand, and a red tag added to a back pocket to identify the brand at a distance.

The modern jeans became popular with cowboys and ranch workers in the West in the 1920s. And in the 1950s, counter-culture types such as greasers and bikers started wearing them, and in the 1960s the hippies liked them, too. By 1970, Levis were mainstream, worn mostly by young people of all types.

Rebel Without a Cause, James Dean

The Facebook posting by a childhood friend made me think back to my first pair of Levis when that dress code was relaxed at my school. I bought them at Brown Brothers, a local men's store, for $11. All you could get in those days were 501s, which are the classic button fly, shrink-to-fit, so stiff they could almost stand by themselves. I sewed a blue star on the left thigh, a tribute to my favorite poster artist, Peter Max. They broke in to become soft, beloved and very personal.

As John B. wrote in his Facebook post: "I remember washing them and putting them on wet so they would fit right. And having my legs stained blue for awhile. And climbing trees in the almond orchard, scrambling up the sides of the gravel pit behind the junior high school, sliding down the back side of Half Dome. I never felt the need to pay others to provide that broke in feeling, prefering to have the fun myself.  I sound like a whining elder, no doubt, as I lament on the efforts and money put into making jeans look old and worn out. Wouldn't it be a hoot if there was a similar passion to make ones face and body look aged and lived in?"

"That is poetry," I replied. "Maybe it's good we can buy our jeans already broken in at our age, so the contrast with the face and body is not so stark. And that mullberry tree I used to climb in the fuse works is long gone. I'm thinking about the smell of the hot dusty earth and dry grass, the feel of the rough bark and the knots in the trunk for toeholds, scraping an elbow getting a grip on the branches. And reaching my favorite seat, breathing in the spicy scent of cool green leaves and the sweet fruit hidden among them..."