Denim

Fülszöveg

From the pioneering '49ers to James Dean,
Levi's 501s to designer jeans, denim has
spanned the fashion gamut from durable to
trendy, ubiquitous to rebellious as the fabric
of choice for more than a century.
What began as American working dress
in the mud and mines of California in the
1800s, cut out by the enterprising Levi
Strauss from his cargo of tents, became in
the postwar world the uniform of the rebel
and the outsider. The new movies reinforced
the look: Brando and Dean in jeans, chest-
hugging T-shirts, and scowls. Then Presley
swung his pelvis and jeans became a symbol
of the sexual revolution, culminating in the
notorious zippable denim crotch on a '60s
Rolling Stones album cover.
Later, in the '70s, jeans became high
fashion and chic, an indispensable item in
the wardrobe of swingers and would-be
swingers of every age and size. Today denim
has reverted to type; denim is bad again,
aggressively macho, and still erotic.
Denim records the changing... Tovább

Fülszöveg

From the pioneering '49ers to James Dean,
Levi's 501s to designer jeans, denim has
spanned the fashion gamut from durable to
trendy, ubiquitous to rebellious as the fabric
of choice for more than a century.
What began as American working dress
in the mud and mines of California in the
1800s, cut out by the enterprising Levi
Strauss from his cargo of tents, became in
the postwar world the uniform of the rebel
and the outsider. The new movies reinforced
the look: Brando and Dean in jeans, chest-
hugging T-shirts, and scowls. Then Presley
swung his pelvis and jeans became a symbol
of the sexual revolution, culminating in the
notorious zippable denim crotch on a '60s
Rolling Stones album cover.
Later, in the '70s, jeans became high
fashion and chic, an indispensable item in
the wardrobe of swingers and would-be
swingers of every age and size. Today denim
has reverted to type; denim is bad again,
aggressively macho, and still erotic.
Denim records the changing face of
denim in a witty text by fashion journalist
Iain Finlayson and an outstanding gallery of
black-and-white and duotone photographs
ranging from classic portraits by Walker
Evans and Henri Gartier-Bresson, to state-
of-the-art design ads by Bruce Weber and
Richard Avedon. This is denim in all its
incarnations—on the street, on the screen,
in advertisements—from the dusty overalls
of the Depression years, through the crotch-
hugging, cleavage-creasing garments of yes-
terday's pin-ups, to the hunky, hustler look
of today. A stunning pictorial history of a
fashion phenomenon, Denim examines the
changing social and cultural implications of
wearing blue jeans.
A freelance journalist since 1974, Iain Fin-
layson has contributed to a wide variety of
magazines and newspapers as fashion writer,
book reviewer, restaurant critic, and inter-
viewer. His articles have appeared in a
number of publications including: Harpers
& Queen, Thtler, Ritz, Good Housekeep-
ing, Company; Cosmopolitan, Daily Tele-
graph, Sunday Times, Financial Times,
The Literary Review, and Books & Book-
men. He is the author of The Moth and the
Candle, a biography of James Boswell, The
Sixth Continent/Writers in Romney
Marsh, and The Scots, an insider's analysis
of the Scottish character. Other published
work includes short stories for The Literary
Review and contributions to Debrett's Book
of Etiquette Vissza