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Want that jacket!

Behold, Boy in a Bitching Distressed Jean Jacket Eating a Fruit Pie by the Master of Blue Jeans.

Not kidding. Okay, maybe I made up the name of the pitcher.

The Canesso Gallery thinks they have identified a previously unknown Seventeenth Century painter they’re calling the Master of Blue Jeans. It’s not that these paintings have just turned up after 400 years, of course. It’s just that somebody stared into the huge reservoir of anonymous paintings of the era noticed a similarity in style and subject matter in these few.

Namely, they’re pictures of poor people wearing denim.

The word “denim” comes from “serge de Nîmes” — which I assume you knew — and “blue jeans” comes from “Bleu de Genes” (aka Genoa) — which you may have known, Meester Smarty Britches, but I didn’t. Both cities claim to have made denim clothes for hundreds of years, but there hasn’t been much evidence of the early years. Until these pictures.

I was a bit dubious at first, but I had a squint at the catalogue and…yeah, the way the fabric is dark blue but the worn bits are white, that’s pretty much denim behavior right there. (That online catalogue is neat, by the way. I mean, you can turn pages and shit, just like a real exhibition catalogue).

The show is sponsored by fashion house Marithe + Francois Girbaud, who pioneered stonewashed jeans 40 years ago and are marketing their new thang, Wattwash jeans. Those are jeans aged with lasers rather than bleaching and washing. The hippies are raving and drooling about it because the process only takes 5 liters of water, as opposed to the 170 liters used by the acid process. Thereby saving the planet or some shit.

HEY HIPPIES! If you care that much, why not do what we used to do: buy them blue and wear them until they look like that.


Via Kottke by way of the History Blog.

Comments


Comment from Uncle Badger
Time: September 29, 2010, 10:14 pm

Bugger the jacket! I want the fruit pie!!!


Comment from Scubafreak
Time: September 29, 2010, 10:18 pm

Ah yes, the joys of people claiming to have been the first to have made clothing out of French Sail Cloth…..

I still say that the Levi brothers did it the best…..


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: September 29, 2010, 10:19 pm

Next week, the earliest footage of the Apollo moon landing is going to air in Australia. Seems the Aussies managed to cop a signal a few minutes before NASA did, but the film has been lost in the archives all this time.


Comment from Skandia
Time: September 29, 2010, 10:23 pm

Nice post Ms. Weasel. Thank you.


Comment from BuckNutty
Time: September 29, 2010, 10:23 pm

“HEY HIPPIES! If you care that much, why not do what we used to do: buy them blue and wear them until they look like that.”

Umm, hippies don’t wash themselfs or their stuff. Their jeans start our blue but only get darker


Comment from Scubafreak
Time: September 29, 2010, 10:26 pm

Hippies should be Cartmanized…….. 😉


Comment from Nina from GCP
Time: September 29, 2010, 10:30 pm

Yeah, and wear you own darn holes in your jeans, willya?


Comment from Can’t hark my cry
Time: September 29, 2010, 10:47 pm

That news about the Australian footage of the moon-landing is terrific, especially given that the geniuses at NASA recorded over the original footage of the landing in what one can only jokingly refer to as their archives: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jul/17/lost-footage-of-moon-landing-to-be-restored/print/?FORM=ZZNR9
Apparently the phrase “historic significance” isn’t in their vocabulary.


Comment from SCOTTtheBADGER
Time: September 29, 2010, 11:48 pm

Looks like a girl with a fruit pie to me.


Comment from Allen
Time: September 29, 2010, 11:54 pm

Ooooo, are we having a thread about cowboy clothing? Strauss, accept no other, and if your fly doesn’t button, well, pfffttt. Because, they double as pannin’ pants. If you’ve ever tried to squat with Wranglers on to do some pannin’ you know what I mean. Crotch Crushers.

Pannin’ = Sniffing for gold. Go figure, you can go from horseback to gold fever without a sartorial break, or a shower. What, do I smell?


Comment from Frit
Time: September 30, 2010, 12:43 am

“If you’ve ever tried to squat with Wranglers on to do some pannin’ you know what I mean. Crotch Crushers.”

Got it in one, Allen. I’ve always maintained that when I sit down, my pants should also sit down. “Lift-n-Separate” is for bras!

Stoaty, thanks for the head’s up on the Apollo footage to be seen in Oz. I’ll be keeping an eye out for it, hopefully the awards ceremony it will be played at will be televised so those of us not living in Sydney can enjoy it too! (I’m in the SE corner area of Oz; Sydney is considerably North of here.)


Comment from Mark
Time: September 30, 2010, 1:08 am

Off topic, but good brewin’ info:
http://physicsgeek.mu.nu/archives/cat_brewing_your_first_beer.php
from a physics Greek none-the-less. Or did I get that wrong?
}:-]


Comment from Deborah
Time: September 30, 2010, 1:29 am

I feel compelled to announce that I used to be a “seamstress” for Levi Strauss. I worked at a plant that made children and youth sizes, where I sewed the two back sides together from the waist to the crotch (the waist band is the last thing to be sewed on).

I never found out if the rumor was true or not: that (original) Levis where designed to twist outward on the legs, so the seams would not rub the insides of a man’s legs while he was riding in the saddle, but countless cowboys believe it is the truth.

And my family seriously believes in fading our own jeans; when they get too worn out to wear, I make bags out of the legs, to give to my friends and family. So I figure have the stoned-wash hippies beat all to flinders.

And that’s a seriously beautiful painting, Weasel—thank you for linking to it.


Comment from SCOTTtheBADGER
Time: September 30, 2010, 3:48 am

I know that the company went out of business, but Oshkosh B’Gosh made the world’s most comfortable and long wearing dungarees.


Comment from David Gillies
Time: September 30, 2010, 6:05 am

I’m too old to wear jeans, even though my twenty-year-old relics fit me once again after my detour through Fatsville. They just look…silly.


Comment from scubafreak
Time: September 30, 2010, 7:57 am

Geeze, Weaz!! Your cat has some HORRIBLE table manners!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lev1kG8vvAI&feature=related


Comment from Mike C.
Time: September 30, 2010, 10:50 am

Cowboy wannabes in places like TX and OK wear only Wranglers, and not only are they not faded, they’re pressed and have a sharp crease fore and aft. Being an eastern sort, I never got the thing about ironing one’s jeans…


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: September 30, 2010, 11:47 am

Scooped out of the spam filter:

hi!This was a really admirable topic!
I come from uk, I was luck to come cross your topic in digg
Also I obtain much in your blog really thank your very much i will come later

Yeah, you come from uk.


Comment from Mr. Dave
Time: September 30, 2010, 1:24 pm

Daluth Trading Company makes jeans with the “hidden crotch gusset” that Rachel likes. Solves the Cheap Hotel problem. http://www.duluthtrading dot com


Comment from steve
Time: September 30, 2010, 2:01 pm

How do you know s/he doesn’t come from “uk”.

For all you know, uk could be in the same neighborhood as Remulak.

You should forward that correspondance to Mazlan Othman….post haste! “First Contact” may, indeed, be upon us!


Comment from Some Vegetable
Time: September 30, 2010, 2:40 pm

As a man deeply interested in crotch gussets, I went to the Duluthtrading website.

It will be a very long day for me now, as (thanks to our fussy corporate webnanny) I am unable to open the link for ‘Firehose Pants’ “Workpants tougher than an angry giant beaver”.

I simply cannot wait to get home, and learn more about a company which combines crotch gussets, firehoses, and angry giant beavers into its corporate meme.


Comment from bad cat robot
Time: September 30, 2010, 3:58 pm

Some Vegetable, there is a cartoon illustrating pants vs. Giant Angry Beaver. I think you will enjoy once you are released from your corporate shackles for the day.


Comment from Mitchell
Time: September 30, 2010, 4:08 pm

^Youtube to the rescue! Check out some of their other ads. Hilarious.


Comment from EW1(SG)
Time: September 30, 2010, 4:11 pm

Lemme see now…crotch gussets…fruit pies…crotch gussets…fruit pies?

I’m with Badger. Fruit pies!


Comment from Dennis
Time: September 30, 2010, 5:14 pm

Deborah
“I worked at a plant that made children and youth sizes, where I sewed the two back sides together from the waist to the crotch (the waist band is the last thing to be sewed on).”
I understand the part about making children (but never heard of doing it industrially) and I undestand sewing them together from waist to crotch (though that sounds more like torture than useful productive activity,…and don’t we all come with waists?), but you made youth sizes of what, exactly?


Comment from Christopher Taylor
Time: September 30, 2010, 6:03 pm

Looks more like leather to me than denim but hey.


Comment from Scubafreak
Time: September 30, 2010, 7:16 pm

BTW, did anyone have Tony Curtis in the Dead pool? He assumed room temp this morning according to Fox News


Comment from Monotone (The Elderish)
Time: September 30, 2010, 9:16 pm

Lol, Hippies…. wearing clothes…. what have we come to?


Comment from Deborah
Time: September 30, 2010, 9:26 pm

@Dennis—sorry for not being more precise:) The Levi Strauss plant I worked at made denim jeans in children and youth sizes (better?). I hesitate to say blue jeans, because in the early 70s, jeans were being produced in brown, dark red, and green, in addition to the standard indigo blue. And the smaller the size, the harder it was to assemble, because the little jeans were constructed exactly like adult jeans.


Comment from Nina from GCP
Time: September 30, 2010, 9:50 pm

And there’re fewer things on this planet more adorable than a pair of size 1 baby Levis. Soooo cute.


Comment from Frit
Time: October 1, 2010, 12:30 am

Humph. Everything is too big for me. Apparently the Duluth Trading Co. doesn’t make things in Frit size. *mutter, grumble, hiss*

Good thing my soon to be Mother-in-Law is willing to refresh my memory on how to make my own clothing! (The last time I made anything was a few decades ago. I need the refresher course.)


Comment from Steve Skubinna
Time: October 1, 2010, 2:49 am

I assume everyone here is aware that the first Levi’s were not “blue.” He made them from undyed denim.

Also I have read that the only change made from the original 501 design was the elimination of the crotch rivet. It heated up when facing a campfire and so was deemed undesirable by early wearers.

“Undesirable” in this case it a direct translation of “Holy shit! Owowowowow! Yowch, that smarts!”


Comment from Abraham Lincoln Facts
Time: October 7, 2010, 12:21 pm

I used to have similar Jacket in my childhood.. if I had it now.. i would auction it lol!

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