JEANS AS WORK WEAR

By Jane Kallesøe & Helle Knudsen

THE HISTORY OF JEANS

Jeans come from the 1870’s, where the tailor Jacob Youphes (later Davis, 1829-1910), in cooperation with the businessman Levi Strauss (1829-1902), began to produce jeans as work wear for the gold mine workers in California, reinforced with copper rivets and double stitching at the pockets, which they got patent for in 1873. 

Until the 2^nd world war, the jeans were only used as work wear.

In the 1950’s jeans became more normal to wear in the spar time for both young men and women, even though some got offended that women wore men pants with zipper in the front. 

In 1980’s the washed-out appearance (stone washed denim) became popular and in the 1990’s different colors of fabric.

The first Levi’s model – Levi’s 501 is still in production and fashionable.

 

CONTRUCTION OF THE JEANS

By investigating the jeans construction, we came to the result that they are made of a woven material with 3/1 twill weave.

The materials of the threads are 2% elasthan and 98% cotton.

The number of warp per cm (22 threads) is 36% higher than the number of weft per cm (14 treads).
The square meter weight of the jeans is 409,6 g, which means it is a 12 oz jeans.

PROS & CONS

Cotton

Pros	Cons
·      High wear resistance ·      Good resistance to light ·      High strength when wet ·      Good absorbency ·      Washable at high temperature ·      Easy to color and postproces-sing	·      Poor insulation properties ·      Tendency to curl ·      Not elastic ·      Shrinks (in raw mode) ·      Takes long time to dry

Elasthan

Pros	Cons
·      High elasticity ·      Washable in high temp. ·      Can be produced in fine fibers ·      Strong in wet and dry condition ·      Dry fast	·      Poor insolation properties ·      Don’t tolerate chlorine bleaching ·      Almost doesn’t curl

By mixing cotton with elasthan (a synthetic fiber) the strength of the material increases, which make the product lighter, cheaper and it’s tendency to curl will decrease.

The cotton part will give the consumer the comfort properties.

IS THE JEANS WORTH THE MONEY?

We wanted to investigate if the jeans live up to its brand, and it’s price.

In order to do this we decided to test them according to different ISO standards.

The result of these test surprises us in different ways. It was especially the washing test that surprises us. When it is washing day we normal just put the clothes in the washer and don’t think much of the chemicals etc., which are sued in order to give the clothes the designer look.

But doing the washing test we got to see how much chemical dye there still was in the jeans, which we have bought a second-hand shop – used, so the jeans had been washed before. (See picture below)

The washing test also shows that the jeans translate color to different kind of fibers. In the schedule below you can see the staining for certain fibers.

Triacetate
Cotton	2
Polyamide	3
Polyester	4
Acrylic	3
Viscose	2/3

Also the peeling test surprised us positively. Even after 9400 turns, you still couldn’t see any peeling on the jeans.

The result is to be found in the specification schedule below.

Based on the overall result we got from the test, we will believe the jeans are worth the money. 

Of course we wish that the chemical dye in wash wasn’t that high, but the jeans doesn’t seem to fade much in color after wash, which is also one of the point given on the pro side.