American Experience (1988) s34e01 Episode Script

1
(spaghetti western music
playing)
(din of busy city street,
car alarm blaring)
JAMES SULLIVAN:
You don't really stop and think
about why
half of the population
of the planet is wearing them
on any given day.
We just are.
♪
MELISSA LEVENTON:
Have you ever asked yourself
why everyone you know
owns multiple pairs of jeans?
JONATHAN SQUARE:
Dress it up, dress it down
TOMMY HILFIGER:
People know that when
they wear them
they look cool.
EMMA McCLENDON:
This one garment can be both
universal and individual
at the same time.
There is nothing like that
in the history of clothing.
VALERIE STEELE:
And, in fact, Yves Saint Laurent
said he wished
he had invented jeans,
that he thought they were
the most important item of
fashion in the 20th century.
MAN:
They wore them in the mines,
on the cattle trails.
My own father wore them toppling
200-foot Douglas firs.
Jeans are the quintessential
American garment.
NEWS ANNOUNCER:
120 years later, gentlemen,
blue jeans are still basically
the same pair of pants
that came out of the
California Gold Rush.
STEPHEN ARON:
But so much of the story
we tell about jeans
is a myth.
NEWS ANNOUNCER:
The strongest pants the West
has ever seen.
TANISHA FORD:
It is about the cowboys,
and the West,
it's about Levi Strauss,
and the Gold Rush.
(horse whinnying)
McCLENDON:
It's always the same story
GENE VINCENT:
Bluejean bop ♪
Bluejean bop, baby. ♪
McCLENDON:
After the cowboys,
jeans got picked up
by rockers and bikers
and hippies
and now everybody wears them.
VINCENT:
Bluejean bop, bluejean bop ♪
McCLENDON:
But denim has been around
much, much longer.
It has a long and deep history
with so many other
fascinating stories
that are not always told.
(applause)
♪
ANNOUNCER:
In 1850, Levi Strauss invented
the toughest pants
the West had ever known:
Levi's blue jeans.
SULLIVAN:
Blue jeans do represent
American culture
to the rest of the world,
but like any other good
product of America,
you know, we, we borrow
all the best ideas
from, from everywhere.
SINGER:
Levi's ♪
SULLIVAN:
The real fact of the matter is
that blue jeans themselves
originated somewhere else.
SINGER:
That Levi's were surely
the best things of all ♪
To roll out of
America's West ♪
To roll out of
America's West. ♪
JENKINS:
The story of denim jeans
is so much more than Wrangler,
it's more than Levi Strauss,
especially when it comes
to the material.
♪
SULLIVAN:
We're not quite sure exactly
where the fabric originated,
but there are several hints.
One is Dungri, India, where as
early as the 17th century,
they were creating
a coarse cloth for workers,
eventually called dungaree.
There's the Genoans of Italy,
who had a type of sail cloth
that was fashioned into
work pants.
And there's Nimes, France,
where the cloth there was known
as "serge de Nimes."
Not always, but very often,
these various types of cloth
were dyed blue,
probably to hide dirt
as much as anything.
GOODY:
So, we have blue
"jean" from Genoa,
we have blue "de Nimes" or denim
coming from Nimes,
but when we make it into pants
in America,
we end up morphing the garment
into blue jeans.
♪
SULLIVAN:
People don't necessarily think
about how their blue jeans
came to be blue.
Historically, that's because of
the indigo dye.
Centuries ago, indigo was said
to be worth its weight in gold.
Competition for it was so fierce
Europeans actually called it
the "devil's dye."
CATHERINE McKINLEY:
Indigo is in fact a weed.
The process of turning indigo
from this small green leaf
into a dye is a very
delicate process;
so only the most skilled
are able to do this.
♪
GOODY:
One of the neatest things
about dying with indigo
is the dye vat is green;
it's not blue.
♪
And when you introduce a fabric
like denim to the dye vat,
it comes out green.
And then, as it oxidizes in
our atmosphere, it turns blue.
It is magic.
Indigo dyeing is magic.
♪
McKINLEY:
In many cultures, indigo cloth
has a spiritual importance.
In Africa, the cloth
is considered the next layer
to the skin.
It holds the person's soul,
their spirit.
♪
Africans have had a long history
of working indigo and knew
the special process involved
in making the dye
and in dyeing cloth.
♪
SETH ROCKMAN:
And of course many African
captives who became enslaved
in the new world brought with
them knowledge of how
to extract the blue
from the plant,
and how to fix the blue
to fabrics.
Indigo is one of the ways
in which slave-holding
became tied
to the economic fortunes
of the colonial experiment
in the Americas.
♪
McKINLEY:
So in the mid-1700s,
there was this labor
that had been extracted
from Africa,
and indigo presents itself
as this thing
with economic possibility.
And then when you add to it
moving the dye stuff from one
end of the world to the other,
it only increased in value.
♪
And Eliza Lucas benefited
enormously
from the impact of this trade.
DAINA BERRY:
Eliza Lucas has been credited
as literally producing
indigo in America.
She's been credited as
a botanist.
She's even written about
in elementary school
and high school textbooks.
McKINLEY:
Eliza Lucas was the daughter
of a colonial governor.
She had studied botany,
and when Eliza was a teenager,
her father bought her,
among many other plants, indigo.
EVAN MORRISON:
The gift came from perhaps
Antigua.
The South needed something
to add to crop rotation,
and tobacco
was something cultivated here.
Rice was cultivated here.
Adding indigo into your
crop rotation
was a way to find
additional profit.
♪
BERRY:
Once Eliza gets her hands
on the indigo seeds,
it takes off
in terms of production.
Indigo was a second cash crop
behind rice in South Carolina.
And on the eve of the
American Revolution,
more than a million pounds
of indigo
was being shipped overseas.
♪
Eliza Lucas was probably one of
the most well-known producers
of indigo in colonial America.
But Eliza's hands weren't blue.
She didn't get her hands dirty
with the indigo crop.
The knowledge to grow indigo
came from enslaved people.
They're the ones that did
the work that allowed her
to become this great planter
that she's been credited for.
♪
McKINLEY:
Indigo really encapsulates
this problem of how do we begin
to tell the story
of captive people
and how we document
their contributions in America,
and to the denim history
in particular.
BERRY:
We know the names
of all the enslaved people
that were owned
by the Lucas
and Pinckney family.
MAN:
"Isaac, Pompey, Molly,
and their child, Nanny
Mary and her children,
Prince and Be"
BERRY:
These are generations
of families.
We're not just talking about
a husband and a wife,
or a mom and a dad.
We see grandparents
on this list.
MAN:
"Nanny and her children.
Juno"
BERRY:
They're the ones that came from
communities that dyed
all kinds of cloth
in beautiful colors.
They're the ones that had
the knowledge of indigo
and created generations
of wealth for these
white slave-holding families.
MORRISON:
Back in the 19th century,
denim really dominated,
because it's a strong weave.
So with the rise
in durable cotton goods,
denim made itself
the accepted second skin
in terms of cloth that was
put into clothing
meant for laborious work.
ROCKMAN:
As American cotton manufacturing
begins to sort of
find its footing in the 18-teens
and 1820s,
mills in Rhode Island,
mills in Massachusetts,
mills in New Hampshire,
they need a source of cotton.
And the only source of cotton to
make these mills
economically viable
is cotton that's being grown
by enslaved men, women,
and children in the
American South.
ANNOUNCER:
Cotton from Alabama,
cotton from Louisiana,
Texas cotton,
Mississippi cotton,
cotton from Georgia,
cotton from Charleston.
It takes two pounds of cotton
to make a pair of jeans.
GOODY:
When you follow the trail
of cotton being grown
in this country in the South,
being shipped to the North,
being woven into blue jeans,
and then being shipped down back
to the South,
where is it going?
Who's wearing it?
There's a database that's called
Freedom on the Move
that has cataloged
and crowdsourced
runaway slave advertisements
from all over the United States.
♪
So slavers would put an ad
describing the person
with detailed descriptions
of what they had on them
when they left.
What clothing they were wearing,
what type of clothing,
what color the clothing was.
MAN:
"Had on when he left, dark jeans
clothes, and a black hat."
MAN 2:
"He carried off a blue cloth
coat, one blue jeans,
and two or three pair
pantaloons."
WOMAN:
"Has on a blue Kentucky jeans
coat and striped pants."
MAN 3:
"wore a brown jeans coat,
and blue jeans pants"
MAN 4:
"New brown jeans."
MAN 5:
"Mixed jeans, frock coat,
and pantaloons."
WOMAN 2:
"A pair of jeans pants."
"a blue jeans homespun
dress coat."
BERRY:
And so you have advertisements
that have very
detailed information
about enslaved people.
And enslaved people were,
in fact, wearing jeans.
♪
ROCKMAN:
This is a story in which coerced
labor produces a raw material
that is exported from one region
to a second region
and which is then sold back
in an ongoing cycle.
♪
An increasing number of
American slaves will come
to be wearing cloth
that's manufactured
in the United States, that
travels under a number of names,
that sometimes goes under
an umbrella category of
"Negro cloth."
♪
This is one of the powerful
things about clothing, right?
The ways in which it can be
used, not only for individuals
to perform their own identity,
but also for the ways in which
a dominant society
can stigmatize people.
♪
SULLIVAN:
So blue jeans
clearly existed,
clearly predated Levi Strauss.
You're looking at farmers,
you're looking at
factory workers.
Miners were wearing denim.
The enslaved peoples of America
were clothed very often
in denim.
McCLENDON:
Basically any type of labor,
hard work,
that you can think of
in the late 19th century,
you would have found people
wearing denim.
Jeans did exist,
but they ripped.
They ripped and they wore down
and they became tatters.
They became unusable.
They didn't last as long.
Anybody who has ever torn a seam
through exertion knows
that there are certain points
in garment structures
that are more stressed
than others.
So Jacob Davis is really sort of
the unsung hero here.
♪
MORRISON:
Jacob Davis was a tailor
in Reno, Nevada
or somewhere thereabouts
in the 1870s.
ARON:
Nevada was, you know, one of
the great bonanzas at the time.
There's this enormous rush
of people.
And great fortunes are made
there from mining gold.
But the greatest fortunes
that are made there are not made
by individual prospectors.
They're made by the people
who can sell goods to miners.
MORRISON:
So this lady approached
Jacob Davis and she said,
"I have a portly husband
who continues to rip
"his work pants,
and I'd like you to construct
a sturdy pair for him."
So he thought, "Well,
I have all these washer
"and post rivets that people
put on these saddles.
"Let's add these to all these
places he keeps
ripping his pants."
So he adds them to places like
the fly and mouths of pockets,
and even onto the mouth
of the back pocket,
which is a patch pocket.
Customer loved them.
Obviously, word of mouth spread.
Soon he had more customers
than he could handle,
and he wanted to scale up
the business,
but he was one man in a
tailor shop in Reno, Nevada.
So he contacted Levi Strauss,
who was his dry good supplier
based in San Francisco,
and offered him
a partnership deal.
He said, basically, "Let's go
into business together.
"We need a patent.
"We'll take out the patent,
"and then we can make these
riveted pants,
because you have the wherewithal
to scale up."
Levi agreed.
The two of them filed for the
patent, and received it in 1873.
NEWS ANCHOR:
The basic design has not changed
in nearly a century and a half.
Today, every pair of Levi
blue jeans
has six copper rivets
that ensure the longevity
of each pair of pants.
McCLENDON:
The rivets were crucial
in the design for durability.
It was like making
some kind of, you know,
armor for your body,
that could just hold up
to anything.
SULLIVAN:
With the addition
of the copper rivets,
the product becomes the most
durable form of workwear
available to any
working American.
♪
I'm looking for the
ultimate jeans!
(grunting loudly)
Hya!
♪
McCLENDON:
At the end of the 19th century,
Americans were still largely
working with their hands.
Nearly 70% of workers
were toiling on farms,
in factories, mines,
or construction.
This, of course, created
a huge market for jeans.
But jeans initially
weren't called jeans.
They were called waist overalls.
SULLIVAN:
Overalls were so prevalent
in the culture that jeans were
just a truncated version
of overalls
without the bib.
That's where the term
"waist overalls" comes from.
♪
MORRISON:
So 1890,
17 years of patent exclusivity
for this rivet reinforced pocket
by Levi Strauss and Company
ends.
Now anyone can use the rivet
reinforced pocket that wants to,
and everybody does it.
LEVENTON:
Once they lose
their patent protection,
there are rivets everywhere,
there are knockoff logos
and brands everywhere.
♪
MORRISON:
So you have companies called
Can't Bust 'Em,
Can't Rip 'Em,
and Never Rip
and Never Wear Out.
SULLIVAN:
There were brands called
Blackbear, Dubbleware, Dozfit.
LEVENTON:
And Fitsu.
MORRISON:
Boss of the Road
SULLIVAN:
Tuf Nut.
MORRISON:
Stronghold
And so you have all these
companies
trying to push their version
of the work pant
out into society,
and we start to see so much
evolution going on within jeans.
LEVENTON:
We started with one pocket
and a button fly.
SULLIVAN:
There were no belt loops.
Most people wore suspenders.
MORRISON:
But in mining you can't have
a strap over your shoulder
that could get snagged
and cause the mine to collapse.
So several folks had a rope tied
around the waistband.
LEVENTON:
Then a second pocket was added,
and there was also
a waist cinch.
MORRISON:
And then they added zippers
SULLIVAN:
Belt loops
LEVENTON:
There was a rivet at the crotch.
People had been complaining
about it for years.
I think they were happy
to get rid of that rivet,
and that has never come back.
McCLENDON:
Denim was changing
and so was America.
That image of someone clad
in denim at the turn of
the 20th century is inevitably,
you know, romanticized.
And the reality is that people
of all different ages, races,
and genders were wearing denim
during this time.
Sharecroppers in the South,
Chinese immigrants on the
transcontinental railway
ARON:
As the word of the Gold Rush
spreads
not only across the nation,
but across the whole world,
people really from
all over the world
come through, and often stay in,
San Francisco.
♪
Turning San Francisco overnight,
not only into a booming
boom town,
but also into a place
where you have more diversity,
a more cosmopolitan place
than any other spot
on the face of the Earth.
♪
SULLIVAN:
There was a huge nativist outcry
in San Francisco
at the time
The idea that other people
from elsewhere are coming to
take our jobs away.
♪
ARON:
The backlash galvanizes
an immense political movement,
who make it their central
platform to
see the expulsion
of Chinese labor.
♪
MORRISON:
There's a rise in racism you do
see in the 1880s and '90s
"No Chinaman made your clothes,"
and "Made by white labor only."
SULLIVAN:
Because Levi was a San Francisco
based company,
they decided, "Okay, we're not
hiring any Chinese people.
We're going to give the jobs to
the local white people."
♪
BERRY:
I think it's a challenge for us
as we embrace
how we came to be here,
we have to embrace the whole
story and the whole history.
♪
Jeans are a great example to
think about American history
and a way to go into parts
of American history
that we haven't always
addressed.
(bulb flashes)
MORRISON:
During the Great Depression
and the Farm Securities Act,
and the contracting of
photographers to go about
the country to document
everyday life,
denim became symbolic
of our nation.
You see people on the West Coast
wearing jeans,
and people laboring
in the ports and the shipyards.
You see people
in the Empire State sitting on
I-beams during lunch breaks.
And you see tobacco farmers
with sun-faded overalls
and it became this
common identity
that I think helps the country
to still feel unified
even during dark times.
NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER:
The knives are cutting;
the load piles high.
The sun beats down
from the August sky.
We built our freedom
and strength this way.
We're building it still
together.
SULLIVAN:
Up until about the 1930s,
denim was really worn out
of necessity.
ANNOUNCER:
When we get together
we're hard to stop.
Working together
SULLIVAN:
It wasn't until those years
and beyond that the product
went from a necessity
to a fashion.
(whip cracking)
A lot of that had to do with
this nostalgia
for the American West.
MAN:
Hey, come back with them horses!
(gunshots)
HOLLY GEORGE-WARREN:
Thanks to westerns,
cowboys became
the American figure
that kind of helped us get out
of the Great Depression
in a way.
We didn't have royalty
like in England and other
European countries,
but we had cowboys
wearing blue jeans.
Thank you so much.
GEORGE-WARREN:
They were our knights
in shining armor.
Follow me, ma'am,
and you'll never go astray.
Right this way.
♪
ARON:
It's hard for people today
to really appreciate
how big the western was.
As the United States is
transformed from being
a rural and agrarian nation
to one in which most people
live in cities or towns,
there is a nostalgic embrace
of the frontier world lost,
and the cowboys in those
westerns almost always
were wearing jeans.
♪
And yet, there's no question
that when we look more closely
at the ways in which jeans
come into the West,
the story turns out to be much
more problematic.
♪
The stories we tell are all
white people.
In fact, the reality of life
in the American West
was much more multi-ethnic.
You know, a significant portion
of the workforce
were people of color
People from Mexico,
Native Americans,
African Americans
probably making up an eighth
to a quarter of the
cowboy workforce.
♪
So we have a much more
complicated reality
that contrasts with
the whitening
of those figures
in the westerns.
♪
McCLENDON:
Of course, Hollywood's take
on the cowboy
was just the start of denim
spreading
beyond the working class.
Now this shift is, is happening
in an era of huge
economic schisms.
The vast majority of people
were really struggling
during the Great Depression,
but there continued to be
an elite class of individuals.
They still traveled.
They still shopped.
MAN:
If you want to be a cowboy ♪
Just come along with me ♪
If westward you'd be going. ♪
SULLIVAN:
One consequence at the time
was that this idea of the
dude ranch came about.
The dude ranch was essentially
a getaway, like sort of a spa
getaway for wealthy Easterners.
MAN:
Get yourself
some wooly chaps ♪
Or can of beans in pails ♪
Then saddle up a wild mustang
and head out on the trail. ♪
ADRIENNE ROSE BITAR:
Because of the collapse
of many of the sources of income
based on cattle ranching
and other traditional
agricultural pursuits,
many working cattle ranches
turned their attention to dudes,
which was a more reliable source
of income.
MAN:
The dude ranch cowhands
demand the choicest roast ♪
They once ate beans and bacon
but now it's quail on toast. ♪
BITAR:
Many of these ranches
were very remote.
It might take two weeks to even
travel by train and horseback.
MAN:
Yippee-ki-yay ♪
BITAR:
They were expensive.
They accepted paying guests
to participate in all the
ranch chores
to herd cattle, to brand cattle.
MAN:
Each wrangling cowhand
is acting as a guide ♪
He's rounding up
the moonbeams ♪
For the lady at his side ♪
Yippee-ki-yay ♪
Ki-yay ♪
LEVENTON:
This was particularly
an opportunity for women.
American society was still not
fully comfortable with the idea
of women wearing pants
in the 1930s.
Bifurcated garments seemed
so unladylike.
♪
BITAR:
Vacationing was a secure
laboratory
especially for the women.
When they looked in the mirror,
which I think many dudines did,
they didn't see their old self
from Connecticut
or Rhode Island;
they saw a cowgirl
from the movies.
♪
Denim afforded many women the
ability to get dirty, to hunt,
to fish, to ride horses.
So I think blue jeans on a
dude ranch
not only gave women the ability
to move more freely,
to experience their bodies
in different ways,
but perhaps also to sort of
think more freely,
to rethink their position
in American society.
♪
SULLIVAN:
This was one of the first times
that women felt
comfortable enough to say,
"Hey, you know what?
"I enjoy wearing that kind of
clothing.
I'm going to do it."
So the American
blue jeans manufacturers
realized that there was
a substantial market
to be conquered
by creating
blue jeans lines for women.
So you start seeing the design
of jeans
beginning to follow fashion
in a way that they didn't
previously do
when they were strictly
work pants.
♪
BITAR:
Jeans entered the world of
fashion in the 1930s
because they functioned
as a souvenir
and they also functioned as a
symbol of wealth and prestige.
Somewhat ironically,
the clothes of the working man
became a symbol that you
belonged to the leisure class.
♪
McCLENDON:
That's the dichotomy sort of
represented in the juxtaposition
between the Dorothea Lange
photos of the Dust Bowl
and Lady Levi's in "Vogue."
They can co-exist
because there was this extreme
inequality in America.
♪
♪
NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER:
Since October 16, 1940,
millions of American men
have joined the armed forces
to defend our country and
our democratic way of life.
LEVENTON:
For many men and women,
World War II was the first time
they wore jeans.
NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER:
The minute the ship left port,
neckties were dropped.
The enlisted men wore dungarees
and the traditional white hats
were dyed blue.
Here are the men who will fight.
McCLENDON:
World War II is a moment where
denim goes global in a sense.
♪
One result of Americans fighting
overseas was that the G.I.s,
when they were off duty,
were in many cases
wearing blue jeans,
and the locals took notice
and thought, "Well,
they look like movie stars,
"they look cool.
They look like, you know,
what we want to look like."
♪
McCLENDON:
There's a way in which
during the 1940s,
because of the patriotism
around World War II,
denim almost became the blue
in the red, white, and blue
of the American flag.
MAN:
The riveting machine ♪
McCLENDON:
You know and Rosie the Riveter
is a kind of classic example
of this.
MAN:
There's something true about
red, white, and blue ♪
About Rosie the Riveter ♪
LEVENTON:
"Rosie the Riveter" was a
Norman Rockwell painting
that ended up on the cover of
"The Saturday Evening Post."
She was like the
American everywoman,
who when the menfolk were away
fighting the war in Europe,
she pitched in,
she did her part.
MAN:
All the day long ♪
Whether rain or shine ♪
She's a part of
the assembly line ♪
She's making history working
for victory ♪
Rosie the Riveter. ♪
SULLIVAN:
With so many of the men
overseas,
something like six million
mothers and daughters
were suddenly going to work
on a daily basis,
and to a large extent
wearing denim.
NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER:
Waitress, salesgirls,
housewives
these girls are now ready
to tackle the work
of producing weapons
and equipment
essential to our armed forces.
SINGERS:
Rosie, Rosie, Rosie, Rosie ♪
Working on an assembly line. ♪
(cheers and applause)
NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER:
A day of days for America
and her allies.
(cheering continues)
How jubilant was the taste
of victory.
How sweet the rewards of peace.
(cheers and applause)
From all the scattered
battlefields, he returned home
again to find a soldier's
welcome.
♪
LEVENTON:
So, what happens when
the soldiers who were wearing
denim overseas come home?
They kept wearing denim.
Why not?
They're great pants.
They're comfortable.
They're durable.
They had gotten used to them.
They liked them.
Why not?
♪
BILL HAYES:
As the World War II vets
started to come back,
they obviously had been through
a lot.
They felt a lot of camaraderie.
They felt a lot of brotherhood
in the trenches.
And they come back
into a very staid,
kind of 9:00 to 5:00 lifestyle,
for some people it wasn't going
to work.
But the combination
of a big motorcycle and denim,
that really works.
MAN:
He wore black denim trousers
and motorcycle boots ♪
And a black leather jacket
with an eagle on the back. ♪
HAYES:
They've all got jeans on.
T-shirt with a cigarette pack
rolled up in it
you look pretty tough.
Suddenly bikers have become
modern-day outlaws.
MAN:
Well, he never washed his face
and he never combed his hair ♪
He had axel grease embedded
underneath his fingernails. ♪
LEVENTON:
So the idea of the outlaw,
which has always had
a stronghold on the American
popular imagination,
was actually promoted
by the movies,
and linked in particular
with jeans.
♪
SULLIVAN:
You know, we see that a lot
in the Hollywood of the 1950s,
classically represented
by Marlon Brando
in the biker film
"The Wild One."
♪
Brando's character, who was,
of course, the guy who's asked,
"What are you rebelling
against?"
Hey Johnny, what are you
rebelling against?
SULLIVAN:
And he says
What do you got?
Like, "I don't know what it is
that I'm rebelling against.
I'm just doing it."
♪
HAYES:
All bets were off at that point.
A lot of the teenagers
may not have wanted to become
Wally or Beaver.
But my friends call me Beaver.
Well, may I call you Beaver?
I'd like you to be my friend.
Okay.
HAYES:
They were able to make
the choice,
and part of that choice
was, you know, having jeans on.
NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER:
The early teens are years
of upheaval and turmoil.
They're years of physical
and glandular change.
Parents of almost every child
find the age of puberty
or early adolescence
full of problems.
GEORGE-WARREN:
After World War II,
really the "teenager" as we now
know it came into being.
NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER:
Their actions may seem excessive
but that's normal for teenagers.
They seem to spend hours in
completely useless activities.
(rock and roll music playing)
SULLIVAN:
Prior to World War II,
you were either a young person
living at home,
going to school,
or when you were finished
with school,
then you entered the workforce.
You were contributing
to the family income.
You rockin' and you rockin'
and you rockin' around ♪
Hop, hop, hop everybody ♪
SULLIVAN:
After World War II,
the middle class exploded.
Families could offer their kids
more leisure time,
more independence.
NEWSREEL ANCHOR:
the rock and roll
teenage cowboy.
GEORGE-WARREN:
The American consumer economy
was booming and it just became
the American way of life:
spend money, buy things,
dress up, you know,
move up the food chain.
NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER:
Gather 'round, kiddies.
Today I'm going to give you
a quick look-see
at what the well-dressed
teenager is doing
in the way of fun and fashion.
SULLIVAN:
If teenagers decided to work,
they could use that money
for their own benefit,
for their own leisure time.
They could buy their own cars.
They bought their own records.
They sort of helped create
rock and roll.
NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER:
Teenagers they're terrific.
♪
McCLENDON:
Jeans got sort of
(laughing):
irreparably linked
with cool.
And coolness became the ideal
to strive for.
NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER:
Kay's mother may have other
opinions of style
of what looks best.
But of course mother has
old-fashioned ideas.
It's like,
"What mom and dad want to do?
"Oh my God.
I can't even talk to them.
I do not want to wear
what they're wearing."
NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER:
The adolescent is self-centered.
LEVENTON:
The charisma of deviance
is powerful.
NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER:
Their sloppiness is so
deliberate as to be offensive.
♪
McCLENDON:
So during the 1950s,
denim becomes increasingly
associated with biker gangs
and juvenile delinquency.
There was a sort of fear,
I think, among adults that
if teenagers put on
a pair of jeans,
they were automatically going
to become delinquents
in some way.
GEORGE-WARREN:
School systems literally started
banning blue jeans
because they identified
the kids who wore them
as the "bad seeds."
They were going to, you know,
beat up a little old lady
and steal her pocketbook
or, or whatever.
SULLIVAN:
The parents' generation
started to clamp down,
which caused a dip in sales.
Suddenly families were
shying away from buying
blue jeans.
♪
McCLENDON:
The denim companies
start to get worried.
As a result,
a lot of the major companies
band together to form what
they called the Denim Council.
♪
ANNOUNCER:
More people than ever are
wearing denim.
You'd have to look far and wide
to find an American of any age
who has never worn blue jeans.
GEORGE-WARREN:
So they start this whole
campaign first to try to counter
the "bad blue jean" look with
the wholesome blue jean look.
"This is the right way
to wear jeans,"
and it's neat with a nice shirt
and this very kind of
healthy-looking kid.
And then,
"This is the bad blue jean."
And so it's the more the kid
like with his hair hanging down,
greasy,
and all that kind of stuff.
Like, see?
There is a difference.
You can be a good kid
and wear blue jeans.
ANNOUNCER:
Denim is really great
for sports.
Looks like this joker
is knocking himself out
trying to prove it.
Folks wear jeans to get
the work done
and jeans to relax in.
McCLENDON:
They tried to create
a National Denim Day.
They had all sorts of
campaigns around the country
which are all about
the discovery of America.
They are about cowboys,
they are about adventure,
and history.
ANNOUNCER:
Blue denim is a symbol
of our pioneering spirit.
It goes right back
to the beginning of America.
Men in blue denim opened up
the old West,
and built our bridges
and skyscrapers.
SULLIVAN:
That series of advertisements
helped reverse the trend
away from blue jeans.
JOHN F. KENNEDY:
In the last few months
more applications for the
Peace Corps have come to us.
SULLIVAN:
By the first years of the 1960s,
the Peace Corps,
JFK's initiative
sending young Americans out
across the globe
to do good deeds,
they were actually dressed in
blue jeans.
That was their uniform.
So no longer was it that
the bad kids were the only ones
wearing blue jeans.
McCLENDON:
One thing in particular that's
interesting about this period
is the denim companies
spend all this time in the 1950s
trying to get away
from the rebel image
and then the 1960s happens.
NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER:
Hippies made a colorful scene
with wild costumes,
uninhibited dancing,
and general high frolicking.
FORD:
When we think about
the denim story in the 1960s,
we almost automatically think
of the hippies,
with their bellbottoms,
and tie-dye,
but the hippies weren't the only
people wearing those clothes.
MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.:
A man dies when he refuses
to stand up for justice.
A man dies when he refuses
to take a stand
for that which is true.
So we're going to stand up
right here.
McCLENDON:
The classic image
of the Civil Rights Movement
is Martin Luther King Jr.
And he and many of his
closest partners
wore suits
and button down shirts,
sort of a "Sunday best"
approach.
KING JR.:
We will be able to join hands
and sing in the words
of the old Negro spiritual,
free at last, free at last,
thank God Almighty we are free
at last.
(cheers and applause)
SQUARE:
Being a man of African descent,
a lot hinged on his
self-representation.
He needed to present himself
to the world
as a respectable person,
because there was already
a notch against him
for being a Black man.
♪
FORD:
The focus on the Sunday best
has obscured the fact that
at that time there were
these young college students
who say,
"Instead, we're going to wear
denim because we want to show
"that our political bonds
are to the Black working poor
and not to the Black bourgeois."
♪
These young people, once they
left Howard University,
Fisk University,
Tougaloo College, to head south,
say, "We're going to wear
this denim alongside
"the working class and
sharecroppers who had been
"trying for decades
to fight for their right
to vote."
They were rebels with a cause.
(crowd clapping, singing)
Freedom ♪
Freedom ♪
Freedom, freedom ♪
JENKINS:
For young Black protesters,
it absolutely is risky
with what they're wearing
because they already have
the systemic pressure
up against them presuming that
they are
of a lower class
or status in society.
And so wearing a certain style
of dress that is aligned
with the laboring class,
that is absolutely bold.
CROWD:
Hold on ♪
Hold on. ♪
FORD:
As this Southern movement
spreads and garners
national media attention,
you now have white students
who decide to go south
to help with the organizing.
MAN:
We are all here,
Black and white ♪
FORD:
So when those white students
go back north,
they go back wearing denim.
CROWD:
Hold on, hold on. ♪
FORD:
This becomes the look of
youth rebellion
in the 1960s.
♪
(shouting, clamoring)
JOHN O'BRIEN DOCKER:
Baby, don't call me a liar ♪
REPORTER:
They represent a new form
of social rebellion.
They dress in bizarre
and colorful ways.
Hippies are very interesting
McCLENDON:
The 1960s is a pivotal point
in the history of denim.
REPORTER:
They are hip,
onto something good.
McCLENDON:
Just like for the
Civil Rights Movement,
for the hippies,
clothing was a form of
political activism.
WOMAN:
Of course it's a whole different
way of living,
it's a whole different way
of thinking.
So many of the civilians
have no concept.
But it's fun.
It's fun to be bizarre.
GEORGE-WARREN:
There was such an emphasis with
the counterculture
on creativity, on individuality,
self-expression.
♪
HILFIGER:
People then embellished
their jeans.
They sewed fringe on them
They put feathers.
McCLENDON: They were patched
JENKINS: Painted
McCLENDON:
Embroidered and shredded
HILFIGER:
All of the sudden your jeans
were your canvases.
♪
There was a cool factor.
And when rock stars and
musicians started wearing denim,
it became even cooler.
There was The Who,
and Janis Joplin,
and the Doors, the Rolling
Stones, Led Zeppelin.
So then everyone wanted
to wear them.
MAN:
By the time we got to
Woodstock ♪
GEORGE-WARREN:
"Woodstock" that movie
completely expanded our idea
of fashion.
I know for me being this kid
in North Carolina,
when I saw that movie, I'm like,
"I want to
wear clothes like that."
A little help
from my friends ♪
(vocalizing)
LEVENTON:
Denim was the uniform
of that generation,
and a lot of the denim companies
started to capitalize on that.
McCLENDON:
It's interesting to look at
that case study of Levi's,
because in the 1950s
they tried so hard to get away
from the counterculture.
And then by 1971,
they use an aerial shot
of the crowd
at a music festival
and just slap a Levi's logo
on it, and that's it!
(cheers and applause)
SULLIVAN:
It's been said that
"Those children of the '60s
came in as a tribe
and went out as a market."
They were the market
for blue jeans.
(cheers and applause)
♪
McCLENDON:
By the time you get into
the early '70s,
hippie chic is everywhere.
FORD:
The fashion industry
becomes wildly taken
with these young radicals.
You have designers with ads
that suggested that,
"The real freedom movement
is in your jeans."
(laughs)
SQUARE:
It is ironic, isn't it?
Rewind like a decade earlier,
youth were sort of wearing denim
as a form of rebellion.
By the time we get to the 1970s,
like denim is being commodified.
♪
STEELE:
The fashion industry co-opts
authentic subcultural styles
and then makes them part of
the system.
Whether it seems dangerous
or seems totally trivial,
the fashion industry takes any
cool look or stance
and markets it if sees
an audience for it.
♪
JENKINS:
We start to see denim jeans
become just a very
lucrative product.
They were really
a great blank canvas
for designers to express
themselves.
HILFIGER:
When I was 16 years old,
I was enamored with music
and musicians,
and I couldn't play
so I couldn't be a musician,
but I wanted to look like
a rock star.
So I opened a small shop
called People's Place
and started selling jeans.
At one point I was thinking,
"I think I could design
better jeans than we're buying
from vendors."
♪
McCLENDON:
The fashion industry realizes
that there's this massive market
for all things denim.
Now it's sleek, high-rise,
tight
♪
There becomes a certain kind of
glamor associated with jeans
for the first time.
♪
HILFIGER:
It was a turning point,
which became the era of
designer jeans.
There was Gloria Vanderbilt,
Calvin Klein
SQUARE: There was Halston
HILFIGER: Sasson
McCLENDON: Fiorucci
HILFIGER: Sergio Valente
We were really trying to outdo
one another with sexiness.
(whistling)
But when Brooke Shields,
as a young teen,
was the Calvin Klein poster
girl, I think heads turned.
You wanna know what comes
between me and my Calvins?
Nothing.
ANNOUNCER:
Calvin Klein Jeans.
HILFIGER:
Everyone said,
"Okay, well, this is going to
a whole new level."
WOMAN:
You've got the look
I want to know better ♪
McCLENDON:
It is like a tidal wave
over the whole industry.
♪
GEORGE-WARREN:
People started actually
verbalizing what everyone
had known for a hundred years,
that blue jeans are sexy.
WOMAN:
Jordache has the fit
that's right. ♪
McCLENDON:
By the late '70s, designer jeans
were chipping away
at the fashion hierarchy.
They make it acceptable
for anyone
to wear a pair of jeans
at any time or place.
STEELE:
Jeans undermine the idea of what
fashion was supposed to be.
They were part of a more general
democratization of fashion.
(siren blaring)
It suddenly became possible
to wear jeans
in almost all settings.
("Rapper's Delight"
by Sugar Hill Gang playing)
Hip hip hop
and you don't stop ♪
We rock it out, baby, boppa
to the boogity bang bang ♪
Boogie to the boogie,
the beat ♪
JENKINS:
In the late 1970s around
the Bronx in New York City,
we start to see hip hop emerge.
And denim jeans become this
sort of a uniform.
MAN:
You see I'm six foot one
and I'm tons of fun ♪
And I dress to a T ♪
You see I got more clothes
than Muhammad Ali ♪
And I dress so viciously ♪
FORD:
For African Americans,
a pair of designer jeans
came with a lot of value.
That's why we get language
coming straight out of hip hop,
like "fresh," "dope," "fly."
MAN:
And the rest is F-L-Y ♪
FORD:
You know, because that spoke to
the value of clothing.
MAN:
Everybody go hotel ♪
HILFIGER:
Hip hop changed denim
in a very big way.
The hip hop stars started going
on tour and doing MTV videos
wearing really cool clothes.
The way in which it was worn
was very different.
MAN:
Oh my Lord ♪
Another corn chopped by the
Wu-Tang sword ♪
Hey hey hey ♪
JENKINS:
In the early '80s,
with bands like Run DMC,
it's just more of
a straight look,
but then it becomes more baggy.
Blow up your project
then take all your assets ♪
'Cause I came to shake
the frame in half ♪
FORD:
And then they started to wear
brands like Ralph Lauren,
and Nautica, Tommy Hilfiger.
Those brands represented
a lifestyle that
historically African Americans
had been excluded from.
I want to thank Snoop Doggy Dog
and everybody on the show.
So wonderful
(cheers and applause)
SQUARE:
I mean when we think about
those brands,
we think about the country club
or yachting.
PUBA:
Tommy Hilfiger top gear ♪
Take no shorts
I'm doing lovely in all sports ♪
Even swing the pole at the
hole in my golf course ♪
SQUARE:
By putting a brand like
Ralph Lauren or Tommy Hilfiger
on their backs,
they were changing the meaning
of the brand.
This brand that's associated
with all-American identity
or whiteness becomes associated
with like hip hop culture.
K7 and The Swing Kids ♪
Da ding de ding de ding
de de de ding ding ♪
Da ding de ding ♪
De ding de de de ding ♪
De de de ding ding
de de de ding ding ♪
("Come Baby Come" by K7 playing)
JENKINS:
Not only do we see
hip hop artists able to remix
sounds, and, you know,
like in music, but they're also
able to take clothing
and remix it for their own
means.
MAN:
Yeah, yeah ♪
JENKINS:
To get your hands
on that clothing and wear it
is subversive in a way.
Because it is saying, "I'm not
supposed to be wearing this,
but look at me, I am."
("Come Baby Come" continues)
Hip hop really helped
to take command
of the denim narrative.
MAN:
Bring it!
("Come Baby Come" continues)
K7 and the Swing Kids!
Peace!
(cheers and applause)
♪
STEELE:
Jeans are probably
the single most iconic garment
of the 20th century.
Each generation
keeps rediscovering how jeans
can be meaningful for them.
♪
ROCKMAN:
Blue jeans are an amazing thing
for anyone trying to tell
a broader history
of the United States.
It allows you to talk about
slavery.
It allows you to talk about
fashion and consumerism.
It allows you to talk about cool
and the invention of cool.
And to have all of these things
under the same heading
is really quite remarkable.
♪
McCLENDON:
Denim and its history
is a perfect metaphor
for where we find ourselves
as a culture right now.
Becoming much more aware
of the silences,
of those groups
that have been pushed
to the side.
Exposing and celebrating
these narratives that haven't
made it into
that typical telling of jeans
is part of the work to change
our understanding
of American history.
♪
FORD:
It's a long journey from
"Negro cloth"
to hip hop denim and baggy jeans
ruling the denim market
in the 1990s.
As I sit here in a denim jacket,
you know, it's clear to me that
we can see the rich tapestry
of where we've been as a people,
as a nation.
♪
JENKINS:
The thing about the denim jean
is it tells a story about
who we are.
It's a garment that's almost
like keeping the fingerprints
of our history
the creases, the tears,
all of it.
You know, you can repair it all
you want,
mend it all you want,
but the scars of that, you know,
the memory, that material memory
will remain there.
♪
ANNOUNCER:
Next time,
the story of three
Black diplomats
who broke racial barriers.
WOMAN:
The State Department was
extremely elitist.
MAN:
They could never conceive
that a Black man
could ever be an ambassador.
WOMAN:
It is hard to do the work of
America
when you have been Jim Crowed
by your own government.
ANNOUNCER:
"The American Diplomat,"
next time,
on "American Experience."
Made possible in part
by Liberty Mutual Insurance.
"American Experience:
Riveted: The History of Jeans"
is available on DVD.
To order, visit ShopPBS
or call 1-800-PLAY-PBS.
"American Experience"
is also available
with PBS Passport
and on Amazon Prime Video.
♪