Kathryn Ross column: Young or old, blue jeans never go out of style

I used to laugh when I would see old ladies wearing jeans.

I only saw my mother wearing jeans once, and I think that was on a camping trip. As a kid growing up, I don’t remember seeing many women wearing jeans, but I have to think that Rosie the Riveter and the legions of women employed in factories during World War II had to have worn jeans.

I remember a photo, probably from the '30s, of my grandmother wearing jeans, but then she was a wild thing for the times. She even had a tattoo.

Now I find that I am the old lady wearing the jeans and I don’t think that is funny at all. As a matter of fact, it seems quite natural.

It is for me. I’ve been wearing jeans or overalls since I was a baby and called them orreyalls. In the 1960s, I climbed on the bell-bottom train because where I was attending college, I found an Army and Navy store that sold sailor denim, bell bottoms.

I left my denim bell bottoms behind when I started seriously riding horses in my early 20s. Then I opted for bootcut Wranglers and Levi’s. By the time the '80s rolled around I was out of the bootcut phase and horseback riding and into straight-leg jeans. That is what I still wear to this day when I can find them.

I’ve never gotten back into the bell-bottom phase. Nor do I like or wear the manufactured cut up, sliced and tattered jeans that are so popular today. I remember wearing jeans with peace sign patches, rainbows, butterflies, and earth signs, but I don’t even think the patches were covering up holes. If the jeans come by the hole naturally, like when the push snowplow snags them or the dog gets ahold of them, then I’ll wear the hole proudly and not even think of sewing a patch on it.

It just amazes me that jeans have been the most popular clothing trend for the last 70 years. I don’t think there is another clothing trend that has had such longevity.

Levi didn’t invent jeans. Authorities claim the fabric was developed in the 1500s in the cities of Genoa, Italy and Nimes, France. Gênes, the French word for Genoa, may be the origin of the word "jeans."

By the 17th century, jean was a crucial textile for working-class people in Northern Italy.

Historically in the 1800s, Swiss troops were furnished with uniforms cut from blue cloth called "bleu de Genes" from which was derived the famous garment known worldwide as "blue jeans."

History also tells us that Levi Strauss, as a young man in 1851, moved from Germany to New York City to join his older brothers who ran a store there. In 1853, he moved to San Francisco to open his own dry goods business. Jacob Davis was a tailor who often bought bolts of cloth from the Levi Strauss & Co. wholesale house.

In 1872, Davis wrote to Strauss asking to partner with him to patent and sell clothing reinforced with rivets. The copper rivets were used to reinforce the points of stress, such as pocket corners and at the bottom of the button fly. Initially, Strauss's jeans were simply sturdy trousers worn by factory workers, miners, farmers, and cattlemen throughout the North American West.

According to the “History of Jeans” in the year 1873, there were two pockets in the front of Levi’s and one on the back right with copper rivets. The small, riveted watch pocket was first added by Levi Strauss in the late 1870s. In 1901, Levi Strauss added the back left pocket.

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In 1955, James Dean popularized jeans in the movie "Rebel Without a Cause" and wearing jeans became a symbol of youth rebellion from that time onward.

In 2015 in the United States alone, $4.8 billion was spent on jeans.

According to Guinness World Records, in 2005 Randy Knight from the USA sold a pair of original Levi’s Strauss & Co. 501 jeans from the year 1890 to an anonymous collector from Japan. The price paid for the 121-year-old jeans was $60,000.

The jeans were found by four friends in an abandoned silver mine in the Mojave Desert, California, in 1998. In 1890 the jean would have cost around .58 cents.

So, why am I going on and on about jeans? Well, it is Christmas time and for whomever might be interested (familywise) “Momma needs a new pair of jeans.”

-- Kathryn Ross writes a weekly column.

This article originally appeared on The Evening Tribune: Opinion: Young or old, blue jeans never go out of style