Nearly a century ago, denim launched a US fashion revolution

The fabric that built America — From its roots as rugged workwear, the material became a society-wide phenomenon in the 20th century, even democratising womenswear. A new photobook revisits its impact.

First designed to clothe miners who flocked to San Francisco during the 1849 Gold Rush, denim was the uniform of the Wild West, signifying the rugged individualist mythos fuelling the Manifest Destiny. Durable and affordable, the material largely remained the provenance of the working class until Roy Emerson Stryker and his eminent circle of photographers at the Farm Security Administration (FSA) elevated this humble garment into a symbol of strength, independence, and cool.

From 1935–1944, Stryker led the Information Division of the FSA, carefully crafting one of the greatest documentary projects in photography history as part of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal. Harnessing the twin powers of photography and media, Stryker assembled an inclusive group of photographers including Dorothea Lange, Gordon Parks, Arthur Rothstein, Jack Delano and Russell Lee to chronicle stories of strength, resilience, and survival.

“His thoughts were that to make people understand social conditions in need of change you had to show photographs and charts — anything to illustrate what you wanted people to understand,” says author Graham Marsh.

Top to bottom:Left to right: © Reel Art Press © Reel Art Press

The FSA strategically distributed the photographs to magazines and newspapers for free use at a time when print was the dominant form of visual media. Noble portraits of the working class, like Dorothea Lange’s ‘Migrant Mother’, were seared into the national consciousness.

But underneath the surface, a cultural shift was taking root as readers poured over pictures of the proletariat in their rough hewn denim work clothes. Here, cowboys, farmers, steel workers, coal miners, and soldiers effortlessly displayed a strapping silhouette, inadvertently launching a fashion revolution.

Now Marsh and publisher Tony Nourmand revisit this extraordinary chapter of cultural history in the new book, Denim: The Fabric That Built America 1935– 1944 (Reel Art Press). Together they poured through the FSA’s archive of some 170,000 images, selecting 250 works that explore how documentary photography has shaped American aesthetics and identity across race, gender, class, and age.

“The photographers in this book powerfully reinforced the nobility and grit of these hardworking celebrated American archetypes,” says Marsh. “Just look at the portraits and know the meaning of strength, grace, and resilience.”

The result is a kaleidoscopic vision of fashion history, as it has never been seen before. The authors take note of the radical shifts that also tie the visibility of denim to women’s liberation.

“During World War II, women were given the chance to rise in the workplace, some becoming pilots and mechanics,” says Marsh. “Denim clothing was favoured and not in short supply like many other textiles at this time. Instead it was being fashioned into more feminine designs.”

Hollywood responded to the moment, transforming denim into the mainstay of rebels, renegade, and mythic figures of the Wild West to craft a new vision of American cool, just as the very first generation of teenagers entered the world.