Men in Jeans

Text by Bradley Quinn

One by one, the ballerinas filed past the Customs officials, each stating she had nothing to declare. Each wore a pair of American-made jeans, rolled up around the ankles and cinched tightly at the waist. Heavy overcoats concealed the bulk that the outsized jeans created, hiding the masculine styles bought for Russian men. This was Moscow airport in the winter of 1972, and the jeans being smuggled in plain sight had been obtained secretly during the ballerinas’ US tour. The Levi’s jeans the women were sneaking past the officials were hot commodities in the USSR, and arguably the most inflated form of Cold War currency ever exchanged between East and West.

The cult status held by American jeans in Communist-era Russia is well-documented today, but the history hides a deeper truth. Jeans, with their workwear origins and classless associations, expressed solidarity with Communist values while injecting capitalist cachet into a spartan menswear economy. Yet, as brands like Levi’s signaled anti-Soviet dissent, their black-market value in the 1970s had a profound effect on the future of American jeans.

Throughout the decade, men’s jeans underwent drastic changes. Paris-based designers Marithé and François Girbaud engineered new cuts that gave men’s jeans a better fit. As Adriano Goldschmeid was co-founding Diesel in Italy, pan-European jeans label Liberto was creating a men’s line characterised by tailored designs. In the US, The French Jean Store in New York introduced the new European styles to male customers. The boutique sold brands such as Chipie and MacKeen, who created fits that were slimmer and more tailored than those offered by American denim brands at the time.

Eager to cash in on the lucrative market beginning to emerge, designers Calvin Klein and Gloria Vanderbilt each launched an initiative to compete with European styles. The two brands worked independently, but along with labels such as Fiorucci, Sasson, Jordache, and Sergio Valente, they pioneered the “designer jeans” movement. Initially, these brands targeted womenswear markets, redesigning traditional masculine styles for young, body-conscious consumers.

Calvin Klein launched his designer jeans collection at Bloomingdales, in 1976. At the time, it was widely known that a pair of Levi’s could be sold for as much as $100 on the black market in Russia, roughly ten times the normal price. Klein’s designer jeans sold for a whopping $50, which he justified with a startling explanation. The designer drew parallels between the USA and the former USSR and the jeans brands their respective consumers revered. Describing his jeans as “sexy”, Klein was confident that his sleeker, distinctively feminine look would be worth every cent.

Although Calvin Klein’s first jeans were made for women, the effect that they had on male consumers was profound. Klein launched erotically charged media campaigns showing models in provocative poses. As Calvin Klein aligned jeans with sex appeal, he revolutionized the way they were perceived. Designer jeans transformed how men saw denim on women and paved the way for tailored menswear versions.

Calvin Klein captured these attributes in the advertising campaign for the men’s line, where they were conveyed by square-jawed, handsome men who could easily be liked and admired by others. The models were uncompromising in their masculinity, and their sex appeal to women was clear. The message was subtle, but deliberate: jeans could heighten a man’s sex appeal, making them a cornerstone of male sexuality.

Klein was one of the first to identity the shift among male consumers, launching a menswear jeans line in 1977. This time, Klein used a different rationale to justify his prices. Speaking to male consumers, the designer explained that jeans, “used to be cheap, and did not require any attention to their design…now they are specially designed to suit individual tastes.”

As the 1980s dawned, they marked a watershed moment in menswear history. They ushered in a fresh vision of what men’s jeans could mean, while empowering the wearers to explore new identities. Jeans could combine key self-expressions in a single item, promising status, body consciousness, sex appeal, and even the potential for social mobility. Lee Jeans introduced the figurehead known as ‘The Striver,’ who encapsulated the sharply-dressed, upwardly mobile man pursuing a career in America’s post-war economy. Jeans had once been the workwear uniform of miners, cowboys, railroaders, and pioneers, but these new attributes transformed them into an object of desire for actors, pop stars, and athletes.

Against this background, the significance of factors as diverse as Cold War economies, global trade, womenswear styles, and male sexuality come into play. The luxury status that jeans achieved under Communism was later reflected in the “designer” versions made for men in the West. The Eastern Bloc nations were far from North America, yet markets as distant as Japan would come to influence the development of American jeans to an even greater degree. As the inspirations and innovations that transformed jeans over time are considered, they reveal the important role they play in defining men in the present day.

Rebellion and Revolt

Ageless, timeless, and classic, jeans are considered to have an iconic status within men’s fashion. Legendary Hollywood actor John Wayne was one of the first men to discover the image-making potential jeans have, and used them to dramatic effect. In 1939, Wayne played an American cowboy in the film Stagecoach, wearing a pair of buckle-back Levi’s in every scene. The actor walked with a characteristic swagger and interacted with his jeans in ways that made them an indistinguishable part of the character he portrayed. He tugged at the cinch-back strap across the back of his jean’s waistband and struck matches along the leg seams. An iconic image of a denim-wearing cowboy emerged from the film, and it created a stereotype of masculinity that continues to prevail.

More than a decade later, Hollywood played a critical role in the transformation of denim workwear into everyday fashion items. In the 1950s, films featuring actors such as Marlon Brando, James Dean, and Steve McQueen portrayed jeans-wearing rebels as heroes that everyday men could aspire to become. Films such as Rebel Without a Cause brought America’s youth-centric counterculture to the heart of the movie industry, introducing the concept of ‘cool’ as they showed what young men should drink, smoke, and wear. Brando and Dean were seen wearing jeans with white T-shirts, leather jackets, and biker boots, inspiring men to pair jeans with these accessories. Several of the looks they created became iconic American styles associated with brands such as Lee, and the casual mode of dressing they represented inspired more versatility in the male wardrobe.

From the end of the 1950s, jeans became subcultural symbols for youth movements such as mods, rockers, greasers, hippies, and punks, sometimes representing anarchy as much as rebellion. The shift from casual cool to counterculture widened the appeal that jeans held for men everywhere, transforming them into one of the most uniquely inclusive items in the male wardrobe.

Denim Revival

The renaissance enjoyed by jeans in recent decades has led to greater awareness of the history behind them. Until recently, the blue-colored cotton fabric known as denim was believed to have originated in the French city of Nîmes. Known in France as “serge de Nîmes”, the name was contracted to “denim” during the nineteenth century when it arrived at foreign ports. Denim’s hallmark indigo color was derived from a dye extracted from the Indigofera tinctoria plant, a species cultivated in parts of Africa, Asia and North America. It was sold alongside a similar cotton fabric exported from Genoa, Italy, inspiring foreign merchants to coin the term ‘jean’.

The jeans revival arose in tandem with new approaches developed in Japan, where designers and artisans advanced sustainable denim and pioneered new cuts. Jeans produced by the Pure Blue Japan brand and the group of labels collectively known as the “Osaka Five” (Studio D’Artisan, Evisu, Denime, Fullcount, and Warehouse Japan) gained cult status amongst European and North American consumers. Labels such as these offer men limited edition jeans featuring innovative herringbone weaves or textured pin stripes. They also offer handstitched details and surprising nuances of color.

In Los Angeles, the jeans revival attracted interest from celebrities, and stars began wearing denim to gala events. Some of Hollywood’s leading men were inspired to become directly involved with the design and manufacture of jeans. Actor Jason Momoa, known for his roles in drama series Game of Thrones and science fiction film Dune, wore customised jeans designed by Schaeffer’s Garment Hotel while filming Road to Paloma. Momoa worked collaboratively with the brand to recreate the customized jeans made for his character and sell them to mainstream consumers.

Model and an actor John Adewumi rose to fame following a successful ad campaign with Lee Jeans. Adewumi signposted the brand’s casual cool approach and made it relevant to the edgy counterculture consumer group emerging in North America, Asia and Europe. Adewumi amplified many of Lee’s core values and widened their appeal to younger audiences.

Throughout their history, a wide variety of influences has made men’s jeans what they are today. In early times, they were synonymous with masculinity and hard labor, at others, they were made in styles virtually indistinguishable from their womenswear counterparts. Previously, film, television, and advertising engineered their transformation into symbols of youth culture, rebellion, and luxury, but now the meanings ascribed to jeans lie in the hands of the wearers themselves. As a new generation of male consumers discovers fresh potentials for jeans, the innovations that result are heralding a long and promising future to come.