When did city slickers start wearing jeans?

[herringbonekid]

Guttersnipe, your examples (while correct) are not what i would call 'city slickers'. they're all working men. but maybe i've misunderstood the term.

Joel, you used the term 'city slickers' in the title of this thread... maybe you can define who you meant ?

 

[Baron Kurtz]

I would reframe the original question in this context as "When did said Longshoremen begin to choose jeans when going for a night out, a dance or whatever?"

work

dance/party

 

[Feraud]

I would reframe the original question in this context as "When did said Longshoremen begin to choose jeans when going for a night out, a dance or whatever?"

Agreed, the original question is a bit mis-leading/cluttered, whatever..

Btw, great pics from Streetcar!

 

[Baron Kurtz]

It's been a long while since I saw streetcar. I forgot about the biceps!


I'm not a believer in the notion that movies even come close to representing reality - that's not their role - but I think in terms of wardrobe, particularly for the Stanley character (and especially because it's Brando), that they will have tied to be true to the workin' man's style of the day.

 

[Feraud]

Agreed. I dig the wife beater, jeans, and two-tone shoe look!

 

[herringbonekid]

I would reframe the original question in this context as "When did said Longshoremen begin to choose jeans when going for a night out, a dance or whatever?"

good idea. so when did they ?

 

[herringbonekid]

actually, that's a different question to the one i though Joel was originally asking; i took it to mean when did white collar workers (city slickers) start wearing jeans for casual city wear.

 

[Tomasso]

i took it to mean when did white collar workers (city slickers) start wearing jeans for casual city wear.

That's the meaning I chose as well.

I'd say that the jeans/ sportcoat look took a toehold at Eastern prep schools and universities circa 1970 and by the end of the decade was being worn by 9-5 suit wearers in their off hours. That's my recollection at least.

 

[GHT]

In Britain and continental Europe they appeared in the mid 50s for the reasons given by The Good, but they really took off with the baby-boomer-hippie-student-radical cultural revolution of the later 60s.

Well I can certainly corroborate that. It didn't matter which subculture you associated yourself with, Levi 501's were De Rigueur.
They never came pre-shrunk, so you had to buy oversize, and then sit for hours in a bathtub of water whilst the jeans shrunk to your leg size.
Then you had denim blue legs for weeks & weeks as a result of the dye running out.
To the O/P, somehow the expression City Slickers and jeans seem to be a contradiction in terms. I fail to see how someone even in a high powered job can be deemed city slicker whilst wearing jeans.
It somehow reminds me of todays penchant for going around in a suit, tieless with an open neck. Just gross.

 

[Hal]

... I'd say that the jeans/ sportcoat look took a toehold at Eastern prep schools and universities circa 1970 and by the end of the decade was being worn by 9-5 suit wearers in their off hours.

This might also have been true in the UK at that time, but sports jackets suffered a big eclipse in the 1980s (squeezed out between suits and casual wear) and came back with jeans in the 1990s. I loathe the look but it may have saved the sports jacket.

It somehow reminds me of todays penchant for going around in a suit, tieless with an open neck. Just gross.

I agree a hundredfold! Ugh!

 

[CharleneC]

Agreed. I dig the wife beater, jeans, and two-tone shoe look!

"Wife beater" is an horrific term.

 

[Deleted member 16736]

City slickers is a misleading term because I wanted to encompass all adults who weren't cowboys or laborers. Thank you for all your replies. Very enlightening. Basically, blue jeans became popular for casual wear among the general adult population much later than I had imagined. Thank you.

 

[1961MJS]

Hi Joel

I always found the term to be complicated. When I was in high school, in a town of 950 people, I wired hog houses, barns, and homes. Since I didn't own pigs or cattle, I was a city-slicker. When I went to college, I was a hick. When I was in high school, I wasn't allowed to wear cowboy boots because I didn't own a horse, and shouldn't wear engineer boots because I didn't own a motorcycle. Back in the 1970's every boy who didn't own a horse or a motorcycle wore Converse Tennis shoes. Now I wear cowboy boots a lot, but still don't own a damn horse.

Just my $0.02 and not worth that.

 

[mattface]

My thinking is that jeans caught on as casual wear (as opposed to work wear) in the 1940-50s, but casual wear had a much tighter definition back then. It would not have been uncommon to see adults wearing them around the house, or even to play sports, or go to a picnic, maybe to the hardware store if you were working on a home improvement project, but not so much to go out to grab a bite to eat, or even to go grocery shopping. Now casual wear is more or less synonymous with every day wear for most. I think that shift came about in the 60s, and really went mainstream in the 1970s.

Having been born in 1971, I only caught the very tail end of that shift. When I started kindergarden, my parents bought me 5 pair of new plaid "school pants", but sometime before the 1st grade, I was wearing regular blue jeans to school every day, and the term "school pants" was forgotten. From that memory, I infer the culture shift happened before I went to kindergarden in 1975, but after my parents graduated High School in the late 60s.

 

[mattface]

Hi Joel

When I was in high school, I wasn't allowed to wear cowboy boots because I didn't own a horse, and shouldn't wear engineer boots because I didn't own a motorcycle.

You should have just bought a motorcycle. Problem solved!

 

[rue]

Bearing in mind that I grew up in a part of the country which tended to run years behind the trends, I never saw an adult male wear jeans on the street until the late seventies. All the men in our family were lifelong blue-collar, working-class types born between 1890 and 1940, and I never saw any of them wear jeans at any time. They wore heavy cotton twill "work pants" both at home and on the job, either as part of a uniform or worn with a heavy flannel shirt. If the job was particularly greasy, they'd wear heavy overalls, but under no circumstances would they wear them on the street.

Hi

My father (born 1919, died 2011) NEVER owned a pair of jeans. He said he used to wear denim overalls in grade school though. I remember starting school in 1966, no jeans, girls had to wear dresses (with pants underneath in cold weather). By 1972 (sixth grade), the girls were wearing hip huggers and you NEVER saw a dress again until high school. I don't remember exactly when boys were allowed blue jeans, but I was wearing them by sixth grade.


Later

That's exactly how I remember it in California. My grandfather (1908-1986) never wore jeans in his life. He wore old slacks or khakis to do gardening or other dirty work. The same with my other grandfather. In fact, my grandmothers never did either. They wore slacks or house dresses when they were doing chores. My parents (both born in the 1950s) wore them during the day, when I was a kid (in the 70s and 80s), but never out to dinner.

On a side note... my mom told me that my uncle wasn't allowed into Disneyland on opening day, because he had jeans on. They had to buy him some slacks to wear at a local store.

 

[Mononrr]

Growing up, most men and women I knew would wear uniforms or work clothes. These did not include jeans. Most of the time supervisory personnel had uniforms as well...different from the laborers. In the evening, people would dress to go out. Suite, tie, etc. this is the exact opposite of today.
I would wear "jeans" when I worked on the farm, but the men did not. For school or after school activities, cotton trousers or wool were the order of the day.

 

[Mononrr]

By the way, my father was in the U.S. Navy. Work detail was jean or cotton shirt and pants. Dress was whites or winter blues. Civvies for shore leave was usually wool suite.

 

[mneurjackson]

I understand that jeans were popular with cowboys and workmen for a long time, but at what point did grown-ups (not teenagers) start wearing jeans as casual wear? I am putting together a 40's/early 50's wardrobe and wondering if jeans were commonly worn by men by this time. In all the clothing ads from this period, I only see them wearing trousers or chinos. Thank you.

Hahahahh
Rather than talking about wearing of dresses of others I would like to talk about myself only
If I'm not wrong as soon as I'd seen my friends wearing jeans and trousers I started wearing mine also

 

[dnjan]

My parents (both born in the 1950s) wore them during the day, when I was a kid (in the 70s and 80s), but never out to dinner.

On a side note... my mom told me that my uncle wasn't allowed into Disneyland on opening day, because he had jeans on. They had to buy him some slacks to wear at a local store.

I was born in the 1950's, and the dress code at my high school prohibited jeans.
From this I assume that in the early 70's, jeans must have been considered somewhat "subversive" - at least in the Midwest.