Jeans, the garment that made the modern world

 I live not far from Genoa (known locally as Genova). It's Italy's largest port and handles all kinds of ships - containers, tankers, cruise liners, fishing craft ... Very powerful as an independent state in the Middle Ages, it let English ships in the Mediterranean fly its flag (a red cross on a white field) as a good guarantee of protection from enemies, and the English have kept it ever since. Christopher Columbus is undoubtedely the best-known Genoese.

Main square in modern Genoa

 

The Lanterna, or lighthouse, built in 1543 and very much the symbol of the city. The coat of arms has the cross of St George, red on white

It's also the city that originated jeans, the name of the garment most likely deriving from the French name of the city, Gênes. Jeans as we know them were designed in the late nineteenth century and were originally worn by men doing heavy outdoor work: dockers, sailors and, of course, cowboys, who needed hard-wearing cloth that survived getting wet and dirty.

Jeanscloth in Genoa, though, goes back many centuries more and was common wear for working people in the city and the hinterland. The once-powerful Genoese navy had jeans as standard uniform in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Women wore jeanscloth skirts. 

"Beggar woman and her two children", one of many paintings by a seventeenth-century artist known only as the Master of the Blue Jeans. The jeans skirt is almost the main feature here.

 

It was also a cloth that could be dyed and hung almost like a decorative tapestry in commercial buildings or, like these images of the life of Christ on blue jeanscloth, in a monastery.

Jeanscloth hangings from the abbey of San Nicolò del Boschetto outside the city. They are now in Genoa's diocesan museum.

The classic indigo dye, imported from India, was in some ways a symbol of the far reach of Genoa's trade, although its inability to get round the Turkish middlemen was largely the city state's downfall, a problem that Columbus had tried to circumvent by trying to sail to India the other way.

This cloth has exploded in popularity since the 1950s - a staple of anyone's wardrobe. So we all have some Genoa style at home!  

Some trans friends grumble at me because I'm not always wearing a twin set and pearls. But the fact is, I like to blend in, be like any other woman around and jeans are what women wear. 

Wearing jeans in London, 2012

 

Which is the more important historical contribution of the Genoese, then: inventing jeans or discovering America? (Or did they invent America and discover jeans? I get confused!)

A dip in the archives

Earlier this year I commented in more detail on women's preference today being for trousers/jeans/leggings rather than skirts or dresses:

One tube or two?

The fact is, this is now the female look. So if someone admonishes you for your choice, then wear it all the more! I always remember this episode in 2015 when a cleric in Pakistan blamed increasing natural disasters on the preference modern women have for jeans:

There's silly, and then there's silly 

I like my jeans. So there!

At home in my jeans earlier this year

Sue x

 

Cari lettori italiani

Rimango in Liguria per il resto del mese anche se ci vengono tutti per le ferie. Non ho mai sopportato il freddo e un bel sole scottante mi fa star bene! 

Oggi ho raccontato un po' di storia culturale sull'origine dei blue jeans per i lettori inglesi.

Sue x