Blue jeans are to be understood as the first item of clothing in the history of fashion which equalized sex and status differences present in society. A person's style had been a tell-tale sign of the social class they belonged to, but jeans have blurred those differences or, in some instances, eliminated them. This thesis takes a look at the history of jeans, from their humble beginnings to now, when every one of us owns at least a pair of them. The main objectives of the thesis are to assess the significance of jeans today, determine the influences of fast fashion, the media and social networks, and examine the practice of wearing jeans. All research questions have been designed in relation to those topics. The empirical part focuses on qualitative research, made up in part by the interviews carried out with nine participants, as well as the analysis of articles by two of the most popular women's magazines in Slovenia. The 'first jeans' memory is still fresh in the minds of interviewees, as up until the purchase of their first pair of 'Western' jeans, they had been facing the difficult circumstances of the socialist regime in former Yugoslavia. To achieve the level of popularity they now claim, jeans had to go through a lengthy process. Their success can be largely attributed to fast fashion and the media, without which jeans wouldn't have achieved the status they have in our society today. Different time periods assigned a plethora of meanings to jeans, while today, those meanings are, by and large, created by mass media. Jeans have become a timeless piece of clothing, the perfect item to combine with for any occasion. From their beginnings as the symbol of workers on American farms and the trademark of counterculture groups, jeans are now seen as an elegant item of clothing or a safe choice for anyone who doesn't want to stand out.
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