Joel_Cairo
Distinguished Member
- Joined
- Jul 24, 2006
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It seems that the conventional wisdom in pop-menswear circles (GQ et al) holds that white denim is somehow intrinsically "of europe". When it's in, it's hailed as a "crisp, jaunty old-world style", when it's out it's derided as "euro-trash." Either way, its always presented as something foreign. Now, I've spent a considerable portion of my life in europe, and I swear I've never noticed white jeans to be appreciably more popular there than in the states. So what gives? am I just looking in the wrong places? My theory is that because white denim deviates from the classical mold of what jeans are (as established by the salt-of-the-earth laborers who built America, and by the wardrobe department of hollywood westerns, and by the iconography of rock & roll, etc), it gets excluded from the proud lineage of this ur-american garment, kind of like an unloved stepchild who gets shunted off to some faraway boarding school in the alps and quietly written out of the will. case in point: This month's GQ answers the gnawing question as to whether a blue blazer is fundementally italian or american with "both", saying the difference is americans wear khakis while Italians wear white jeans:
Thoughts? [/jargony conspiracy theory]