[On May
20, 1873 dry goods retailer Levi Strauss and tailor Jacob Davis received
a patent for work pants reinforced with metal rivets, and blue jeans were
born. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy Strauss and a few other contexts for
those uniquely American articles of clothing!]
On what two sets
of histories and two contemporary spots reveal about advertising blue jeans.
1)
Cowboy ads: As I mentioned in Tuesday’s post,
the association of blue jeans with cowboys has been kept alive and ever-present
over the last century largely through pop culture, and most especially through
advertising. A Pinterest search for “Vintage Western wear,”
for example, brings up countless ads for
Levi’s and other denim brands featuring cowboy imagery and iconography. The
question about such ads, I suppose, is whether they’ve been targeted entirely
toward outsiders, or whether insiders to those geographies or communities might
genuinely have been influenced by them as well. The (1958) second hyperlinked
ad above, for example, notes that Levi’s is “in tune with Western tastes” (a
groan-worthy pun, as the pictured cowboy is strumming his six-string), which
feels to me as if it’s targeting Easterners or others seeking to understand and
replicate such tastes. But of course, ranchers and other Westerners needed to
buy clothing too, so perhaps Levi’s was trying to genuinely align its marketing
campaigns (and its product) with those Western tastes.
2)
Women’s
jeans over time: As that LiveAbout article traces nicely, ads for women’s
jeans have since at least the 1930s likewise linked their product to Western
imagery through such phrases as “Original Western Blue Jeans” and “Jeans for
Country Living.” But while of course there have long been cowgirls and female
ranchers and other such roles, the iconography of women and the West has more
frequently portrayed them as the helpmates to male figures, as in the 1950s
Levi’s ad featuring the picnicking woman whose jeans are “right … for leisure.”
And beginning around the 1960s, those highlighted ads evolved to focus far more
on fashion, both through “regular” women models and (increasingly over time)
through supermodels such as Brooke Shields, Anna Nicole Smith, and Claudia Schiffer.
To some degree, the gradual but unmistakable shift of blue jeans from (ostensibly)
working apparel to part of a fashionable ensemble can be traced through that last
half-century of evolving ads and images.
3)
21st century ads: The associations of
jeans with cowboys and the West certainly haven’t gone away, as illustrated
with particular clarity by the 2010 Wrangler ad entitled “A
Cowboy’s Life.” Yes, that 21st century cowboy has a family and
various leisure activities, but he’s still entirely intertwined with iconic
images, all the way through the final shot of him literally riding off into the
sunset. But then there’s 2017’s
wonderful Levi’s ad “Circles,” which portrays Americans (or humans, as
there’s no reason its images have to be limited to the US) of just about every
ethnic and cultural type, all unified through their joyous participation in dancing
circles and, yes, their blue jeans. I know full well that ads are always
carefully and to a degree cynically constructed, but they can at the same time
reveal genuine and important cultural and historical shifts—and “Circles”
suggests that, like every part of Americana, blue jeans can and must evolve to
better reflect our deeply diverse society and world.
Special Memorial
Day post this weekend,
Ben
PS. What do you
think?
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