Cool

 

This subjective scrapbook of denim indulgence and inspiration doesn't contribute to the well-documented origins, manufacture or brands of jeans. Instead it's a celebration of a textile which, more than any other, denotes an effortless style & attitude of its wearer: most interestingly the disenfranchised and the libertarians from varied backgrounds. Intrinsically linked with youth, action & culture we celebrate character, context & our denim cool. 
 

Joseph Szabo

 

First off, photographer of American youth: Joseph Szabo, who captured the lifestyle of real teenagers in real places doing their own thing. Seminal book, Teenage, is a collectors item extraordinaire crammed full of real denim stories.

Marvin Gaye

 

No surprises that popular music embraces jeans as the shorthand route to cool and the blogosphere is over run with the usual odes to denim legends. But most examples are formulaic and most descend to cliche. We start with Marvin Gaye and his soulful, early 70's, down-time double denim. 

Bowie, Cherry

 

Mavericks showed new ways to wear the fabric: Off duty Bowie in glam-utility, the electro northern soul of Low; he rarely puts a foot wrong. Neneh Cherry and her West London Buffalo style, post-modernism in streetwear and the triumph of styling over design.

Harrison, Weller

 

The m'ockers George Harrison & Paul Weller, demonstrating how to wear a workwear garment with British urbane style. Harrison the only Beatle with any sense of style & Weller, President of the Style Council and saving grace of The Jam.

Bad Brains

 

Punks lived in their jeans, tattered and torn, rarely with style but Bad Brains broke all the rules mixing West Indian, military and denim for a cacophony of hardcore noise, hair and cool.

Chris Lowe

 

Menswear afficionado Chris Lowe of the Pet Shop Boys and his adoption of Italian 'Paninari': the template of trainers, stone-wash jeans, loose shirt & sports jacket which became de rigeur for 'casuals in Northern Europe. Suburbia would never look so well dressed.

JJMarshall Associates

Basquiat, Blake & Pollock

 

Denim appropriated from manual labour to creativity as post-war artist movements each took jeans as their uniform, from the Americana-obsessed pop artists of Andy Warhol and Peter Blake to the more physical and expressive painting of Jackson Pollock and later Jean Michel Basquiat. Pollock in particular spawned a thousand imitators and along with Brando, Dean & Presley et al must be credited in popularising this workwear staple as a symbol of rebellion & style in the 50's.

Hopper, Rampling

 

Like the music industry, film was/ is quick to adopt the evocative power of denim in storytelling. There are well documented films & actors which are entirely synonymous with jeans, but we choose the brooding sexiness of Anglo-French chanteuse Charlotte Rampling and brooding psychosis of Dennis Hopper in his 1971 self-documentary The American Dreamer, here we see macho Americana played out with true, misfit charisma. Whilst Ramplings 1970s on & off screen persona best capture the liberated ease, simplicity & beauty of denim lifestyle, 

 

Chuck D

 

Denim has long been the choice of counter culture movements & protest, from civil rights in the USA to Eastern European revolt. This symbol of freedom is the uniform of the American dream and its export shows no sign of diminishing; but its accessibility & democratic appeal is always attractive and when radicals as compelling as Gill Scott Heron or Public Enemy's Chuck D wear it with such style and authority we learned that denim can be subverted and reinvented and continue to be powerful uniform.
Note, he is photographed here by Glen E Friedman, the prolific photographer/ documenter of American alternative music thru the 80s & 90s. Fuck you Heroes is the seminal anti-jock denim book of the last 20 years.