Blue Jeans, the Ultimate American Icon
Gold was discovered in California in 1849. This resulted in more than eighty thousand American’s rushing to California. The pioneering spirit spread and by 1890, the West’s population reached nearly 17 million. The west became the most racially diverse part of the country. All were in search of a better life for themselves and their families, seeking what would become known as the American Dream. During this time innovation and creation were prompting remarkable growth in industry. New products that made life more tolerable were spreading to all classes of people. One popular item of clothing that can trace its roots to the Gold Rush is blue jeans. Blue jeans grew out of necessity but they now represent the spirit of the west and the ideals of America. Blue jeans are seen all across the world as an American symbol, perhaps the ultimate American icon.
The best way to understand why blue jeans are revered is to first learn about their history. The history of blue jeans began with Levi Strauss. In 1847 Levi Strauss emigrated from Bavaria, now part of southern Germany, to New York. Once news of the Gold Rush reached New York, Levi Strauss packed up his belongings and headed west. In 1853, Levi Strauss reached San Francisco California, where he officially became an American citizen. Strauss was not there to search for gold. He moved west to open a branch of the family’s dry good business. He did business with many miners and began to understand their needs. A miner’s foremost need was for stronger clothing, especially pants.
Levi Strauss began making pants, known then as waist overalls. Levi Strauss contacted his family in New York and told them of his new venture. He asked them to order as much canvas as possible. Strauss experimented with all aspects of pant making. He tested different materials and found denim to be the strongest. He tried many different dyes. He decided on a deep-blue indigo-blue, since it was easy to replicate the shade. With the indigo-blue color and denim fabric combination blue jeans were born.
The new pants took on a new name, denim blue jeans. They were tough, reasonably priced, and lasted longer than any pant before. Blue jeans accommodated the lifestyle of the hard-workers such as miners, rancher, farmers, railroad workers, and teachers. Life out west was tough, work was hard, and da...
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... a denim art contest in 1973. The winning pants were shown off to the public on an 18-month tour of American museums. In the 70s, more styles of jeans were emerging. Bell-bottoms first appeared in 1970. Until 1970, blue jeans were designed to fit men. That changed in the early 70s when the first jeans made to fit women were introduced. The popularity of blue jeans allowed Levi Strauss and Company to become the largest clothing maker in the world during 1977.
Blue jeans continued to be a popular item through the 1980’s, which is often considered the decade of designer jeans. Since an increasing number of companies were creating jeans, labels became an important element of the pants. Jeans were fashionable, and worn more for look than for durability. Blue jeans remained a popular item of clothing through out the remainder of the 20th century, and into the 21st. Levi Strauss and Company’s sales for 2001 were 4.3 billion dollars. The styles are constantly changing to accommodate the needs and desires of the consumers. Blue jeans were originally created as a uniform for the lower class worker, but they have become a symbol of American ingenuity, ambition, individuality, and success.
J. Crew, also known as J. Crew Group Inc., is a private label company known for its preppy fashions that are fashionable yet costly. Essentially, the company was owned by the Cinader family for most of its history. Mitchell Cinader and Saul Charles founded the company in 1947. It was originally known as Popular Merchandise Inc. doing business as the Popular Club Plan, in which Mitchell’s son Arthur was the overseer. The company sold women’s clothing through in-home demonstrations. In the early 1980’s, Cinader and Charles observed catalog retailers such as Land’s End, Talbots and L.L. Bean reporting rising sales in revenue. With intentions to increase sales and duplicate success of these well known companies, Popular Club Plan began its own catalog (http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/j-crew-group-inc-history/).
Debating which constitutional form of government best serves democratic nations is discussed by political scientist Juan Linz in his essay “The Perils of Presidentialism”. Linz compares parliamentary systems with presidential systems as they govern democracies. As the title of Linz’s essay implies, he sees Presidentialism as potentially dangerous. Linz points out the flaws as presidentialism as he sees them and sites rigidity of fixed terms, the zero-sum game and political legitimacy coupled with lack of incentive to form alliances as issues to support his theory that the parliamentary system is superior to presidentialism.
Discussions of which constitutional form of government best serves the growing number of democratic nation’s are in constant debate all over the world. In the essay “The Perils of Presidentialism”, political scientist, Juan Linz compares the parliamentary system with presidential democracies. As the title of Linz’s essay implies, he sees Presidentialism as potentially dangerous and sites fixed terms, the zero-sum game and legitimacy issues to support his theory. According to Linz, the parliamentary system is the superior form of democratic government because Prime Minister cannot appeal to the people without going through the Parliament creating a more cohesive form of government. By contrast, a
During at elections one can notice a key difference between the two systems. In a parliamentary system the people of the nation elect a political party to represent their interests. Then the party that gains the majority of the votes elects, or may already have elected, someone to be their spokesperson who becomes the Prime Minister of said nation. In a presidential system, on the other hand, the people elect individual persons to become the President and members of the congress, in separate elections.
First connotations were simple: "jeans are tough and rugged as men who wear them". This image of a 100% man was even strengthened after western movies appeared. Soon jeans, and so Levi’s brand which in people’s mind turned to be their synonymous, became a symbol of freedom, adventure and independence. In this moment, managers of LS&Co decided to expand the brand. Even though there where various new cloths introduced to the market ; 501 jeans remained their top-selling product. It was their new brand strategy to "offer products for every life style", which turned to be a fiasco. Not only it didn’t bring expected results, what is more, this to big diversification caused drops in sales. It was so decided to come back to the core product and it’s image. To strengthen the Levi’s position on a market, their launched a new campaign which emphasizes emotional connection between jeans and theirs owner. To wear 501 it is to be yourself – they said.
Discussions of which constitutional form of government best serves the growing number of democratic nation’s are being debated around the world. In the essay “The Perils of Presidentialism”, political scientist, Juan Linz compares the parliamentary with presidential systems as they govern democracies. As the title of Linz’s essay implies, he sees Presidentialism as potentially dangerous and sites fixed terms, the zero-sum game and legitimacy issues to support his theory. According to Linz, the parliamentary system is the superior form of democratic government because Prime Minister cannot appeal to the people without going through the Parliament creating a more cohesive form of government. By contrast, a President is elected directly by the
Levi's had sold to Wal-Mart through a value brand called Brittania in the 80's and the 90s, but that came to an end in 1994 over a dispute in Canada about Levi's Orange Tab jeans. After that, sales dwindled for Brittania, and Levi's sold Brittania to VF Corp. In 2002, however, Levi's was thinking about offering a new value brand for Wal-Mart. It was not that easy of a decision though. They had to think of a way to keep the existing customers in the other channels and not lessen the brand's perceived quality overall.
Within parliamentary systems, the government i.e. the legislature consist of the political party with the most popularly elected Members of Parliament (MPs) in the main legislative parliament e.g. the House of Commons in the United Kingdom. The Prime Minister is appointed by the party to lead as the executive decision-maker, and the legislature work to support and carry out their will (Fish, 2006). In presidential systems, the President is directly elected with the support of their political party, with the legislative being separately elected and, in the case of the United States, being made up of representatives from different states (BIIP, 2004). This essay will provide examples to suggest that Presidents are generally more powerful than Prime Ministers. As two of the oldest forms of parliamentary and presidential governments (Mainwaring and Shugart, 1997), the United Kingdom and the United States will be the main focus of this essay, but other parliamentary and presidential countries will be mentioned.
The other type of political system being analyzed is a parliamentary system. A parliamentary system has its executive branch in ...
These individuals come from educated and sophisticated backgrounds and socioeconomically fall within the middle to upper class. This target customer won’t buy new clothing based on the fact that it might be worn out or too old, they buy habitually in order to keep up with the latest trending styles and innovations that money can buy. “Other than their poise and perfect coifs, you can identify members of this gym robot army by their brand of clothing. You’ve seen them at your gym, at the Whole Foods and in line for green juices; they’re the Lululemon ladies and they’re fancy as fuck.” (Blisstree) This consumer segment is also very brand and status orientated, and therefore views and wears Lululemon as a status symbol of high end and high quality, athletic
The concept of parliamentary political system was rooted in 1707 of Great Britain; the word derives from ‘parley’, a discussion. It was used to describe meetings between Henry III and noblemen in the Great Council (Szilagyi, 2009). It was originated in British political system and is often known as the Westminster model as it was used in the Palace of Westminster. It became influential throughout many European nations later in the 18th century (Smith, 2010). Countries with parliamentary systems are either constitutional monarchies such as the United Kingdom, Denmark, Australia, and Canada or parliamentary republics such as Greece, India, Ireland and Italy (McTeer, 1995). The parliamentary type of government is known for its three distinctive features; first, executive is divided into the head of state and the head of government, they are independently elected forming a dual executive; second, the fusion of ...
In the world of fashion, there is denim. It is one of the world’s oldest fabrics, and has been modified and remodelled to go with the latest fashion trends. The first ones who wore this fabric are workers in the California Gold Rush era, designed by Jacob Davis because of its sturdy material that withstood the harsh working conditions. Not just them, even sailors from Italy use this material too as their sailing uniform. Then, it started appearing as an actor’s apparel, and that’s when denim started to become one of a fashion item. People started wearing jeans as part of their daily apparel and even adding their own ideas, such as studs and colouring it with different shades of denim. It doesn’t only stop around that era, but today, they are seen everywhere and has become a major clothing piece for almost all of the age groups. As a reference, we can see young children already wears jeans as part of their clothing, the teenagers added jeans to their wardrobe, and even for the seniors, they consider jeans as a simple and comfortable clothing pieces.
INTRODUCTION: As a retail major at Florida State, I have been able to learn a lot about my love for fashion. One thing that is true about me is that I love to understand the origins behind different subjects, whether that is my family or, in this case, piece of clothing. Perfectly tying those two worlds together, I am going to be talking about the origins of denim jeans. First I will go over the history, then I will go over how jeans became popular, and lastly I will talk
The articles point out the adaptability between the two systems and how they differ from each other. The presidential system is a fixed term in office that does not allow for some political adjustments to require some events. In this system, there is no democratic principle existing to solve dispute between executive-legislative branches. There is also less inclined to consensus building because compromises look negative to others. In parliamentary system, the adaptability for the system is that the cabinet crises are easily solved.
This fusion of power allows the people’s representatives in the legislature to directly engage the executive in debates discussion in issues that will bring positive development in the state. This is not possible in the presidential system since the legislative and the executives arms are constitutionally separated and thereby restricted to engage the legislature in a discussion in which reasons are advanced against some proposition or proposal. The outcome is that party leaders in parliamentary system are more reliable than those in presidential systems. Presidential systems have turned the aim of electoral campaign into personalities rather than platform and programs because the focus is on the candidate and not on the party in general. But parliamentary systems on the other hand focus much more relating structured they do not do anything outside the scope of the party. We can compare the quality of leadership or administration in British, Canadian prime minister to the United State president. In all the country presidential system of government are chosen because people think been a good leader is by popularity and the ability to win election not minding if the candidate is fit for the task of presidency. But in parliamentary system, the person that has high quality of leadership competent enough and trustworthy is