Jeans - the Blue Cult

From Studded Workmen's Trousers to Cult Designer Status

Author: Alexandra Schmidt

Length: 52'

For decades now, jeans – usually blue, faded and often with holes or patches – have been a best seller of the fashion industry and a standard element in wardrobes of the western world. Designed over 100 years ago as work trousers for gold diggers, horse breeders and farmers, jeans today have advanced to become a highly modern and fashionable piece of clothing. The bandwidth of trousers on offer ranges from the dark-blue classics all the way to luxurious designer items with fancy embroidering or gemstone trimming. The Mustang Company is one of the few manufacturers that still produce their blue jeans in Europe. In Hungary, this German firm steeped in tradition produces up to 4,000 pairs of jeans each day. Even though fully sewn in 14 minutes on average, many a pair of jeans is subjected to ill treatment for up to seven hours using pumice stones, emery paper and bleaching agents. After all, whatever looks old and used is considered trendy. The Italian manufacturers Martelli are considered masters of the art of so-called vintage jeans. Using complex destructive processes, sitting creases are pressed, seams worn down and "bottoms" scrubbed until light in colour. This is where jeans collections from Levis, Dolce & Gabbana and Armani are also given their popular "scrappy" look & feel, modelled along the lines of hundred-year-old pairs of jeans for which the company is prepared to pay up to 30,000 euros on the international collectors' market. A documentary on the design and manufacturer of this classic element of clothing.

year of production: 2005