“American Denim”. 2023. Denim, thread, fiber. 12″ x 12″
When one thinks of American Denim, the first thought that often comes to mind is Levi Strauss. He founded the first company to manufacture blue jeans in the US.
Jeans are made from denim. Denim is made from fibers dyed with indigo, and indigo links to the African slave trade.
Eliza Lucas, who launched the indigo industry in South Carolina, owned 20 enslaved West Africans. “In South Carolina, slaves provided the labour for and sometimes supervised whole operations”1 of indigo crop. Africans had a long history of working with indigo and knew the special process involved in making the dye and in dyeing the cloth.
Denim cloth is made from cotton. Slaves picked the cotton by hand, and it was a very labor-intensive process.
Cotton was grown in the South, shipped to the North, woven into blue jeans, and then sold.
This is the history of American denim.
1. The Journal of Southern History
