from dirt to desire

Something that never seems to go out of style is a pair of jeans. They are sold by designer brands for thousands of dollars, while also being sold by local vendors for less than ten. It has become a staple in everyone’s closet, regardless of their gender, age, or style.

Before the multiple styles and variations that we see today, they were commodities that were associated with a group of people who were mainly involved in physically demanding jobs. Tracing back the history of jeans, we can see how exactly they became the globalised commodities that they are today.

It all started back in the 1870s in the American West. Denim was never something that was meant to flatter bodies. It was a commodity designed for miners, laborers, and railroad workers; it was meant to protect the workers’ bodies. Looking at the product now, it clearly doesn’t remain that way anymore. Capitalism transformed this good into the most recognisable commodity of the 20th and 21st centuries. Denim has had quite a journey over the 100–150 years since it was introduced.

Jeans were introduced as a solution to the main problem faced by blue-collar workers, the solution to fabric tearing under strain. The iconic Levi’s leather patch, which is still sewn onto their jeans to this day, shows the original meaning behind the product. It shows the image of two horses pulling a pair of denim trousers from either side to represent the strength. When Levi Strauss and Co patented the denim trouser in 1873, it had one purpose: to endure hours of strain, dust, and friction.

The Levi’s leather patch represented the era when jeans were only considered as workwear for men. This obviously did not remain that way for long, as soon after, jeans evolved into something much more culturally symbolic. Jeans became associated with youth, rebellion, and fashion by the early 20th century.

Looking at how jeans moved beyond workwear, they slowly started to acquire a cultural meaning. This shift changed how they were seen and worn. Clare Sauro and Joseph Hancock, in their article, Jeans and Their Fashionable Meanings, argue that the reason denim became such a culturally significant commodity is because of how ordinary it was. It was something that people wore every day, regardless of their status or social groups. This feature of jeans made them quite flexible. The paper looks at how denim was reinterpreted, namely by two fashion designers: Michael-Birch Pierce and Vanessa Fath.

A collaboration in 2020 between Pierce and Levi’s led to the launch of customised denim trucker jackets embroidered with male nude forms and Swarovski crystals. For Pierce, coming out as non-binary and expressing it through fashion is profoundly important, and they feel their expression helps others struggling with gender (Sauro and Hancock 2023).

Fashion designer Vanessa Fath uses denim as a way to promote social awareness; her collection features hand-painted images of sexual abuse survivors to bring attention to social issues. Her 2018 denim collection, entitled “I Believe You,” was inspired by Denim Day, a movement to end sexual assault that began as Peace Over Violence in 1971 (Sauro and Hancock 2023).

Something that was once a practical garment became a commodity that expressed identity.

Jeans were acquiring all these new meanings, but if we look deep, who exactly is shaping these meanings, and to what extent?

The article “Post-Feminism and Popular Culture”, by Angela McRobbie, makes it evident that these new meanings that denim was acquiring are shaped by capitalism. She claims that feminist ideas are absorbed and repackaged as individual choices in the context of consumer culture. Jeans still represent freedom, but McRobbie questions what kind of freedom this really is. If empowerment is achieved and expressed through what an individual wears and buys, it is participation in the market rather than the rejection of it. Empowerment, becoming an individual concept in the 21st century, leads to the body becoming the center of attention. Jeans become a way to represent the “empowered” body, which ties them to a narrow idea of the feminine beauty standard. This is where capitalism takes over; the “ideal woman” becomes not only the target of marketing, but marketing itself.

The American Eagle campaign with Sydney Sweeney is the perfect example of the shift from what jeans used to be to what they are now. On the surface, it is harmless and playful, but looking into it, it does echo everything that McRobbie warns about. The slogan, which is along the lines of “great genes” being paired with her blonde hair, blue eyes, and the “All-American” beauty standard, brings up issues and concerns about what exactly the advertisement is promoting.

Something that was once a symbol of women who rejected the restrictive dressing norms imposed by society is now a commodity that is being used to promote that exact type of femininity. The advertisement isn’t just sexualising the commodity, but also promoting the “ideal” wearer. Jeans, in this case, are being sold through a particular fantasy of a particular type of femininity.

What began as workwear gradually transformed into something else entirely. Sauro and Hancock’s article presents the dynamic nature of denim, and McRobbie’s article directly adds to this by showing that this nature of denim ultimately was the reason it got absorbed and reshaped by capitalism and consumerism. Jeans still represent identity, but consumer culture has redirected them into a marketable commodity. This absorption changes how we look at resistance as a term. When it becomes something to be bought, it no longer challenges the system in the same way. It becomes a part of it. It is no longer empowerment; rather, it is something that is shaped by what is desirable. Denim is now a part of the same system that it once seemed to resist.

Bibliography

McRobbie, Angela. 2004. “Post‐feminism and Popular Culture.” Feminist Media Studies 4 (3): 255–64. doi:10.1080/1468077042000309937.

Sauro, C. and Hancock, J.H., II (2023), Jeans and their Fashionable Meanings: Revisiting Beverly Gordon’s Cultural Conceptual Framework. J Am Cult, 46: 55–67. https://doi.org/10.1111/jacc.13440

Levi Strauss & Co. “Two Horse Brand Leather Patch.” Levi’s. Accessed March 18, 2026. https://www.levi.com/

American Eagle. “Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans | American Eagle,” July 23, 2025. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AK8s3iqL99c.