What better way to kick off a Monday than to fill that noggin of yours with some rather random, little known facts about denim? Here, what you didn’t know you didn’t know about those beloved blues.
1. Over 200 pairs of jeans can be made from a single, 500-pound bale of cotton.
2. It takes just over two pounds of cotton to make a single pair of jeans.
3. Jeans got their start in Genoa, Italy, a city known for a cotton material called jean. (Get it? Genoa / jean?) The fabric was soon shipped throughout Europe, and in the French city of Nimes, when weavers tried to reproduce the jean fabric, they came up with another, similar twill fabric instead, one that became known as denim, literally “de Nimes”. (French translation: Of Nimes.)
4. In 1817, the U.S. Navy introduced bell-bottom trousers to enable their men to roll up the trousers above the knee when washing down the decks, as well as to make removal of said jeans easier when forced to abandon ship.
5. James Dean rocked denim throughout Rebel Without a Cause, thus rendering jeans a symbol of youth rebellion during the 1950s. As a result, jeans weren’t allowed in many restaurants, theaters and schools.
6. The majority of jeans’ zippers boast the letters YKK. YKK stands for Yoshida Kogyo Kabushikikaisha, which is Japanese for Yoshida Company Limited, a company formed in 1934 by Japanese zipper manufacturer, Tadao Yoshida.
7. An American owns an average of seven pairs of jeans.
(Any other interesting tidbits you’ve come across? We found many of these gems on good ol’ Wikipedia. Old school pic of Dean from Pinterest.)
