Wentzville High School - Pow Wow Yearbook (Wentzville, MO)

Page 11 text:

were manufactured to be sewn over non- existent holes. To fade their new jeans, youngsters bleached them, if the bleach ate a hole in the fabric so much the better. Rag peddlers sold anything made of denim at a premium to boutiques and department stores, where secondhand jeans outsold new ones, and at higher prices. The denim phenomenon quickly leaped the oceans to change the world's way of dress Governments might engage in anti-Ameri- can politics, but whole populations pulled on pro-American gants. Levi Strauss moved into the 1 60's, first exporting then manufacturing abroad. With offices in 35 countries and plants in 12, the com- pany's international division now accounts for more than one quarter of Levi's total S750 million in yearly sales. Bleu Bell, Inc., the second-largest U. S. jeans man- ufacturer, markets its Wranglers in 85 countries and produces in 17. ln Holland, the jeans capital of Europe, 40 percent of the population is reported to wear them daily. ln Italy, a recent bill- board ad showed the Creator, as depicted by Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel ceiling, handing Adam a pair of Levi's. In Austrailia, 80 percent of all pants sold are jeans or jeans-type. But leave it to the French to hook up jeans with haute couture. One high-style designer devoted part of a collection to variations an the jeans theme, and the beautful people can hardly wait to pay 5100 for fur-trimmed couturier pants copied from an S8 mail- order model. Old or new, glorified or plain, jeans are likely to be around for a long time to come. Already they have succeeded where states- manship has failed: although still unable to speak the same language, the inhabi- tants of this embattled planet have at least agreed to wear the same pants. X Reprinted with permission from the August 1974 Reader's Digest. Copyright 1974 by The Reader's Digest Assn., lnc. Con- densed from The Saturday Evening Post.

Page 10 text:

thing, Levi opened a work-clothes shop in San Francisco Knot far from the com- pany's current headquarters in the 29- story Levi Strauss Buildingl. When canvas ran out, he switched to a tough cotton fabric originally loomed in Nimes, France, called serge de Nimes, or simply denim. CGenoese sailors had long worn pants of similar fabric, known as genes, and later jeans.7 Tall tales of denim's indestructi- bility proliferated. In one story, when the coupling between two railroad cars broke, a trainman hitched them together with a pair of Levi's and made it ten miles to the next station. The truth was perha s less dramatic, but the robust work clothes made by Levi Strauss, his relatives and competitiors did in fact uniform the men who laid the rail- road tracks, rounded up the cattle, cut the forests, farmed the plains and built the cities of this fast-growing nation. By the 1950's, jeans had become the staple play-garb of children, and teen- agers began battling parents and high- school administrators for the right to wear jeans to classes. In the course of this struggle, jeans themselves became a sym- bol of defiance against authority or op- pression, whether parental or political, real or imagined. Their secret message identified youthful wearers one to another. l am one of ou--against the others. In the early 19ZO's, the civil-rights march- ers, screaming youngsters at Beatles con- certs, anti-war activists, college protest- ers and higpies--all seized upon blue jeans as t eir very own. But a funny thing hap end on the way to the barricades. Fashion dlscovered blue jeans. Suddenly, stores blossomed with jeans, not only for blue-collar workers and rebel- lious youth but for family members of all ages and all income levels. No longer were there just standard jeans--tight around the hips, with multiple pockets and double-stitched seams--but all manner of variations: flared legs, bell bottoms, cuffs, wide belt loops, tricky pockets, fancy stitching, lighter-weight fabrics, rainbow l colors. Overnight, the nation joyfully l donned jeans and was off--cycling, garden- N ing, boating, bowling, horseback riding, back-yard barbecueing. Although outraged to find themselves wear- ing the same gear as their parents, young p hotheads refused to abandon the jeans that T had become like a second skin. Instead, they wore theirs more ferociously than N ever. Holes? Patch or embroider them. l Rips? Sew a piece of braid on top. Seat gone? Salvage the part from another worn pair. Legs torn? Amputate them and flaunt the frayed edges. Faded? Groovy. The tattered look of raveled, beat-up jeans be- came another way of nosethumbing at the world of materia ism and status. But, once again, fashion co-opted its op- position. Nlachine-embroidered patches

Page 12 text:

gfk, 1 3 .if .J I 'The I I 4 , X , .1 -