A couple months ago, my work Slack was abuzz. A writer from Vice UK had published an article with the sensational title, “The Death of Denim: How Jeans Stopped Dominating Men’s Style” and everyone started weighing in. Naturally, as I work in denim, the majority of our commentary was unfavorable and the discourse quickly devolved to a thorough roast of the author’s personal style; but something bothered me. It’s not uncommon to read these sensational “such-and-such trend is dying” articles, often titled (Insert fashion thing here) is Dead, Long Live (Insert fashion thing). It’s like in any industry, when you see articles that contradict each other crop up every few months. Brown Rice is Actually Bad For You! Flossing is Good For You! Wait, Now Flossing Is Actually Not Good For You Anymore. But what separated the Vice article from the other “denim is dead” derivatives I’d read lately was it’s central assertion that denim is inherently masculine and toxically so.

The author made the case that modern masculinity is changing, which is true, but that denim was somehow incompatible with this change. And suggests that a man in denim doesn’t care for his skincare or listen to Ariana Grande, which seemed like absurd correlations. It’s challenging, from a modern perspective, to appreciate just how much the meanings and subtext of this legendary fabric have changed. The author draws a false equivalency between denim and manhood that only makes sense if you disregard the entire history of blue jeans.

The de facto uniform of America’s poor folks from the late-1800s until main-streamed post-WWII, blue jeans’ workwear status didn’t mean that just white men wore the clothing. Brando and Dean might be burned into our collective unconscious, but it was other, marginalized peoples that made jeans cool, not them.

A Step Back

As I’ve often remarked, there is a forest-for-the-trees problem with much of men’s fashion, especially denim. Denim jeans have become so ubiquitous as to be unremarkable and their position in fashion’s mainstream can make wearing them seem less a statement and more of a safe choice. But before denim was a safe choice, worn predominately by white, male, middle class men, it was a anything but. A risky fabric, associated with criminality, deviance, and marginal identities. For many, many years after riveted blue jeans were first invented, they weren’t considered appropriate clothing for polite society (in other words, white society). Major U.S. magazines, even fashion ones, didn’t contain pictures of people wearing blue jeans or advertisements for denim brands until the mid to late-1960s. Denim simply wasn’t worn unless you were working… or incarcerated.