Denim: The Fabric That Built America

The legacy of denim in America, as seen through early FSA photographs of “blue collar” workers. There is perhaps no other fabric so inextricably associated with a country as is denim with the United States of America. First popularized by Levi’s iconic jean designs in the mid-1800s, denim quickly became the material of choice for working-class Americans, spurring an influx of other brands making workwear with the durable and ubiquitous fabric—from Wrangler and Lee to OshKosh and Carhartt. In the 1950s, denim moved from a work fabric to leisurewear. A large part of this transition was a new generation trying to connect with the rugged, patriotic spirit that the ordinary worker had come to symbolize after the onset of World War II.This volume traces the origins of this shift through a compendium of photos, drawn primarily from the archive of the Farm Security Administration (FSA), featuring American workers in denim. In both black-and-white and color, we see ordinary American laborers in