Listening 7 – Listen for specific words

Nearly everybody has a pair of jeans. Invented in a simple tailor’s shop in the U.S., jeans are now a staple in wardrobes across the globe. One anthropologist hundreds of people on the street in dozens of countries and found that nearly half of passers-by wear jeans on any given day. How did this American win over the world?

Sometime in the 1870s, a woman asked a tailor named Jacob Davis to make a durable pair of pants for her husband, who was a woodcutter. To make the pants, Davis used a strong fabric, which he from a supplier owned by Mr. Levi Strauss. He then reinforced the pants with copper rivets to prevent tearing along the seams and around the . Word about this robust new style of pants spread like wildfire among manual laborers, and soon Davis was receiving so many for the pants that he could barely keep up with the demand.

Davis wanted to patent his , but he couldn’t afford the patent application fee. This spurred him to call Levi Strauss to ask for financial assistance. As a result of this , the famous brand of Levi’s jeans was born, and Strauss and Davis opened a large manufacturing plant in San Francisco. Jacob Davis continued to manage the for the rest of his life.

Levi’s jeans were initially made in two fabrics – one was cotton duck (which is similar to canvas) and the other was denim. both pairs were dyed blue, the denim jeans turned out to be far more popular. The blue dye didn’t penetrate the denim as deeply, and the result was that the color faded and changed over time – giving the denim jeans a “character.” In addition, denim was a  and more comfortable fabric, and became even more so with age.

Jeans are certainly practical for workers – but their in popularity can be credited to Hollywood. Before World War II, jeans were primarily worn in the part of the United States. They were considered cowboy clothing – a symbol of rugged American individualism – but hardly appropriate for more casual or wear.

In the 1950s, two legendary American – Marlon Brando and James Dean – wore jeans in films where their characters were portrayed as rebels who were “cool.” Jeans became associated with the “bad-boy” image, and were even banned in – which of course made teenagers all the more eager to wear them.

Within a decade, jeans had spread to the class and many variations of color and cut were being produced. Women loved the fact that they didn’t require frequent , and didn’t need to be ironed at all. Not only that, but they fit close to the body in a way that rivaled even tailored clothing.

Today jeans are an everyday item and a of youth, casualness, and comfort. According to Paul Trynka, the author of a book about jeans, we love our jeans because they come to represent our identity. He says, “The eternal appeal of jeans is just that they reflect us and they reflect the lives that we’ve had in them.”