纽约时报摘抄

It's difficult to find a garment as widely embraced, worn and loved the world over as jeans. The classic symbol of the American West is now a staple in wardrobes around the world. But why? Cowboys may wear them but so do supermodels, farmers, presidents and housewives. Ask any group of people why they wear jeans and you will get a range of answers. For some they're comfortable, durable and easy - for others they're sexy and cool. Jeans mean different things to different people. Does this explain their wide appeal? It is a subject that is relatively unstudied, says anthropologist Danny Miller, whose book Blue Jeans will be published next month. In every country he has visited - from the Philippines to Turkey, India and Brazil - Miller has stopped and counted the first 100 people to walk by, and in each he found that almost half the population wore jeans on any given day. Jeans are everywhere, he says, with the exception of rural tracts of China and South Asia. Continue reading the main story “ The secratt of them Pents is the Rivits that I put in those Pockots” Jacob Davis, tailor The reason for their success has as much to do with their cultural meaning as their physical construction. They were first designed as workwear for labourers on the farms and mines of America's Western states in the late 19th Century. When a Nevada tailor called Jacob Davis was asked to make a pair of sturdy trousers for a local woodcutter, he struck upon the idea of reinforcing them with rivets. They proved extremely durable and were soon in high demand. Davis realised the potential of his product but couldn't afford to patent it. He wrote to his fabric supplier, the San Francisco merchant, Levi Strauss, for help. The world's oldest surviving pair of jeans dates from around 1879 "The secratt of them Pents is the Rivits that I put in those Pockots," he said. "I cannot make them up fast enough…My nabors are getting yealouse of these success." Levi's, as the patented trousers became known, were made in two fabrics, cotton duck (similar to canvas) and denim. "They found really early on that it was the denim version that would sell," says Paul Trynka, author of Denim: From Cowboys to Catwalks. Denim was more comfortable, softening with age, and its indigo dye gave it a unique character. Indigo doesn't penetrate the cotton yarn like other dyes but sits on the outside of each thread. These molecules chip off over time, causing the fabric to fade and wear in a unique way. "Why did it sell?" asks Trynka. "Because the denim changed as it aged and the way it wore reflected people's lives." Because of its fading quality, denim was sold raw - unwashed and untreated - and by the beginning of the 20th Century workers began to realise they could shrink the trousers to a more comfortable fit. Not only were they more durable but each pair of jeans began to tell the story of the worker and his work. Continue reading the main story Fell apart - after three years of hard wear A 1920 letter in the Levi's archive from miner Homer Campbell of Constellation, Arizona, describes how he wore his jeans every day for three years: "Please find enclosed one pair of your overalls which I am sending you that the head of your fabric department may determine what is wrong. I purchased these from the Brayton Commercial Co of Wickenburg, Arizona, in the early part of 1917 and I have worn them every day except Sunday since that time and for some reason which I wish you would explain they have gone to pieces. I have worn nothing but Levi Strauss overalls for the past 30 years and this pair has not given me the service that I have got from some of your overalls in the past. I know that it is your aim to present a superior article on the market and consider it my duty to help you in any way I can. Please consider this and let me know if the fault is mine." "Jeans are the most personal thing you can wear," says Miller. "They wear to the body." But the initial explosion of denim into the world of casualwear had more to do with what jeans had come to symbolise. Continue reading the main story Down with denim The Guardian's Hadley Freeman predicted - or perhaps hoped - denim would meet its end five years ago in a piece for the BBC's Magazine. An unofficial poll of our readers disagreed. Actress Joan Collins admits wearing jeans but finds them wildly unflattering: "I haven't liked jeans for years - probably because their ubiquity has become terribly boring. Do people really want to conform to looking just like everyone else?" Daniel Akst, of the Wall Street Journal, suggests a denim tax to raise much-needed funds during the financial crisis: "Denim is the SUV of fabrics, the wardrobe equivalent of driving a hulking Land Rover to the Whole Foods Market. Our fussily tailored blue jeans, prewashed and acid-treated to look not just old but even dirty, are really a sad disguise. They're like Mao jackets, an unusually dreary form of sartorial conformity by means of which we reassure one another of our purity and good intentions."