Friday, May 22, 2015

Dear Jeans, Happy Birthday!

“Don’t wear skinny jeans, if you don’t have skinny genes.”

This axiom, you will agree, contains a good deal of truth.  Especially because, very often, our desire to wear something might be in direct contrast to the bodies we possess to carry that ‘something’ off.

Millions will admit looking into their wardrobes and wondering why they can’t fit into those jeans again; in which they had once looked good.

The blame rests not necessarily on the genes acquired, but also on the calories consumed.

“It's a recipe for disaster when your country has an obesity epidemic and a ‘skinny jean’ fad”, said an amusing e-card I stumbled across on Internet.

Immediately, the country that came to my mind was the country where ‘jeans’ was first patented; and from where, this wear, spread everywhere.

Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis were granted the United States official patent for copper-riveted jeans on May 20, 1873.

So, “Wish Your Blue Jeans a Happy 142nd Birthday”, says a latest TIME magazine article.

If you do that today, I think, you would be two days late. But you might still be interested to know that by the 100th anniversary of the patenting of ‘Blue Jeans’, USA was already producing 450 million yards of denim annually.

And the global denim fabric production, in 2006 alone, was over 2.7 billion metres.

About blue denim, Fortune magazine has this to say: “the garment has fit the thighs of miners, farmhands, cowboys, rebels, hippies, rockers, hip-hop artists, fashionistas and businesspeople alike. Even Apple founder Steve Jobs adopted them.”

When President Barack Obama threw the opening pitch at a Major League Baseball All-Star Game in 2009,  the commentators spent more time discussing his jeans, than the game.

Of course, I exaggerate.  But Obama went on record then, saying, “The truth is, generally I look very sharp in jeans.”

That is why songs of praises, of jeans, abound in pop culture. “Forever in Blue Jeans” by Neil Diamond, and “Jeans On” by Keith Urban are my personal favourites.

I remember how I pestered my parents for blue jeans, when I was in High School; and got that grand ‘Wrangler’ pair which had thrilled me no end.

Later, at college, it was my third pair of jeans, I think, which still brings back a painful memory.

In Chemistry Lab, one day, I was holding a beaker with some concentrated sulphuric acid, when a friend knocked me over, accidentally.

The beaker broke, the acid spilled, the desk burnt, my legs burnt, and my new blue jeans was completely ‘hole’d.

Thanks to the thickness of the denim, my thighs did not get burnt a lot. For me, then, the pain of my damaged-jeans was actually more, than that of my singeing skin.

When they realized what could have happened if my pants had been of normal fabric, my parents were, obviously,  glad they had given-in to my demands for jeans.

But, that aside, what is true is this.

Whether you wear a boot cut or a flare leg, a slim fit or a low rise,  a dirty wash or a stone wash,  a skinny one or a stretch one, these jeans are here to stay.

The thick blue denim has weathered time, for over 142 years now.

And, I am sure, it will not ride into the sunset – on the thighs of some guy, with a girl - any time soon.

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