Quiet piano music plays 🎵
My name is Emma McClendon and I am the curator of
Denim: Fashion's Frontier at The Museum at FIT.
These pants feature a fall front and large patches across both legs.
They're the oldest example of denim we have at the Museum at FIT, so I knew
when I began selecting pieces for the denim exhibition we had to include them.
Unfortunately, when we first acquired them in the 1980s
there wasn't a whole lot of provenance attached to them.
We weren't told exactly who owned them,
what they were worn for,
or even where they were made.
The only information listed in our records
was a general date of 1870s.
This was probably because Levi's patented
their first denim work pants in the 1870s.
However, these pants are not manufactured by Levi's,
nor do they look particularly like a pair of Levi's jeans
aside from the fact that they are blue.
The most striking difference between these pants
and a pair of Levi's 501s, is that they have a fall front
instead of a center fly.
A fall front is distinguishable by the square flap of
fabric that folds down from the waistband
where it attaches with three small buttons.
There are further buttons beneath the flap that can't be seen
which help to secure the opening when the pants are worn.
Fall fronts typically date to much earlier
in the 19th century than 1870.
They're even often dated to the late 18th century.
So right away I knew that there was
quite a bit of mystery surrounding this piece
and that we needed to investigate further before they went on view.
My name is Nicole Bloomfield
and I am a conservator at The Museum at FIT.
When this pair of nineteenth-century pants
came in to the conservation lab for examination
I was immediately struck by their vibrant blue color,
napped cotton, and painstakingly applied denim patches.
It is interesting to note that only the patches themselves are denim.
The pants are made out of a thick, soft springy cotton.
Like Emma noted, the date 1870 seemed odd.
Especially because I noticed a tremendous amount of hand stitching.
With closer examination I realized the entire garment was hand-stitched –
top to bottom, inside and out,
including all of the patching.
This rang a few bells for me because
the sewing machine was introduced in the 1850s
and was already widespread by the 1870s.
Other key indicators of an earlier date are the
fall front opening and the bone buttons.
Both of these features are commonly found
on late 18th century and early 19th century garments.
The center front fly became popular around the 1840s
and by the 1870s metal buttons, as opposed to bone,
were used for workwear, most notably by Levi's.
These inconsistencies led me to ask,
what could have been the market for these trousers?
Obviously the patches point to a heavily repurposed object,
so the next thing I did was very carefully
turn the pants inside out so I could get a better look at the way they
were pieced together and to see how they might have been used and worn over time.
I noticed that the interior of the waistband is reinforced with denim and there are
interior linen patches at the fall front.
The back is pieced with the denim upper gusset,
which you can see here.
It is a triangle-shaped piece at the center
that originally would have had lacing
that helped the wearer tighten the waist.
There is also a partial hip yoke.
You can see how later on Levi's kept the hip yoke but eliminated the gusset
replacing it with this cinch back.
The pocket bags are patched denim and muslin.
The raw edges of the seams are finished with the hand overcast stitch.
The hems are folded over and stitched.
All of these construction techniques were common in the early 19th century.
There was also most likely stirrups attached at the bottom.
Faint marks left behind show where the original stitches
attached the stirrups to the hem.
Stirrups are typically thought of as a feature of riding pants,
however they were also a fashionable component
of men's dress from the 1830s to 1840s.
Another surprise was that the denim patches are not only
found on the exterior.
There are two large denim patches
on the interior of the knee area as well.
As you can see in the photo
these patches are beautifully hand-stitched and probably extended the
life of these pants considerably.
The gorgeous blue color of the trousers does not appear to be original.
If you look closely, you can see that
the dye does not extend into the seams in-between the thread and the cloth.
This demonstrates that the pants were dyed after they were made.
Additionally, the bone buttons
absorbed the blue color inconsistently and are darker at the center
and more worn on the sides.
That said, it does seem like the pants were dyed prior to the
denim patches being applied.
The wear pattern of the dye on the napped cotton
indicates that the holes that the patches are covering were already blue.
This is important because I was worried
that they were only dyed blue to match the denim patches
in order to mimic the look of blue jeans and could have been possibly used for theater.
It's hard to say for sure what the complete story is with these pants,
but we know that they've had many lives.
It is most likely that the pants started out as informal day wear
and were converted at some point into workwear
and heavily used for many years.
The cut and tailoring of the pants, such as the fall front,
missing boot straps, and length of the leg helped us
narrow the date down to the 1840s.
Even though these pants raise many questions
they are fascinating as a starting point for the exhibition.
They're a true precursor to the modern blue jean.
They also highlight a huge shift between how denim,
and even clothing in general,
is treated today versus 200 years ago.
Today denim is washed, sanded,
distressed, and broken down before it even reaches stores.
It's disposable.
These pants, however, have clearly had many lives.
They've been meticulously patched by hand,
reworn, reused, recycled, year after year, decade after decade.
Even denim work clothes were something you kept and took great care of.
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