Funfact: Today’s dress code — White shirt and ‘rivet reinforced waist overalls’
Part 3: Story of Colour Blue
A story about blue would be incomplete without jeans. This story began 500 years ago, in Genoa, Italy. Genoa was famous for cotton corduroy and soon started supplying a sturdy blended cotton fabric called “Bleu de Genes” for workmen (Genes is the French word for Genoa). You probably guessed it — this phrase was the precursor to Blue Jeans! Genoese navy adopted it since it did not lose strength when wet. The weavers in Nimes, France tried to replicate this fabric but ended up making something else — “Serge de Nimes” which means the twill from Nimes.
“De Nimes” is where the word denim came from.
Indigo was used because it was the only dye available in plenty (coming in ships from India — after Vasco da Gama discovered a sea route) and it couldn’t be used for a lot of other things — Indigo does not permeate the fabric and sticks to the surface. Thus an Indigo dyed fabric fades with every wash and also takes away some of the threads — gradually making the sturdy denim more flexible with every use. To cut costs, only warp threads were dyed and weft threads were left white — something that is still followed today — that’s why your jeans are whitish on the inside.
Cut to the Gold Rush in America about 150 years ago — a trader by the name of Levi Strauss (a name that continues to be spotted on tiny red tags on our butts) set up shop in San Francisco to expand his family business. Meanwhile one of his clients in Nevada, a tailor named Jacob W. Davis, was asked by an irked female client of his to make pants for her husband that won’t fall apart. After the pants were stitched using the blue denim which was common then, this guy ingeniously put copper rivets at points of stress — pockets and base of the fly. “Rivet Reinforced Waist Overalls” — or Jeans, started selling like hotcakes! Unable to manage the demand, he asked his supplier, Levis Strauss to partner with him and get a patent. Thus on May 20, 1873 they got a patent for “Improvement in fastening Pocket-Openings” and Jeans were born.
Thus, our dear colour blue went on to represent “blue collared” from the “blue blooded”. In the 1950s, jeans were popularized by James Dean in his movie Rebel Without A Cause and became an important part of revolution and teenage disillusionment. The rest as they say, is history.
