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pre face The more I work with them, and it’s been a good few years now, the more convinced I am that jeans possess magical powers. They are the only item of clothing that you can wear hiking in the mountains, on the beach and on an evening out and always feel at your ease. Jeans never disappoint you, their fabric is a friend who never tells you off, who lets you express yourself freely, lets you be yourself. It is the only natural double-faced fabric, white and blue, the only one that lightens and brightens as it ages, without fading to a dingy shade like the others. It is the only one that goes with all the others, with any colour. This is its strength, and it’s clear for all to see. People are much more sensitive than you would think, they now react much more strongly to issues like being green and, in the case of jeans, organic cotton and treatments that pose no health risks. Today there is a deep longing to recover a lost harmony and balance, and that’s the inspiration for my new venture Love Therapy, born of that need to give and receive joy, even when shopping, interacting with people rather than just objects. I’ve always believed that any trade or enterprise, even the most down-to-earth ones, must have ethical values at their core, thus creating an ethical way of doing business. Buying jeans cheers you up. I’ve got umpteen pairs, but I always enjoy buying new ones. Denim can be processed and treated in infinite ways, some of them truly amazing. I think the Japanese make the loveliest denim, with the selvedge still visible, woven on those tiny seventy-centimetre looms they imported after the war from the US, where they had been scrapped. Jeans have a wealth of fascinating stories to tell, tales of manual labour, social upheaval, creativity, style and fashion. However, fashion has not yet convincingly conquered that territory that is denim, I feel it has got it wrong. Denim is a fabric of the very highest quality, both simple and luxurious at the same time, that could easily be made into superb, lightweight, deconstructed, unlined jackets. Yet all those fashionistas who like to imagine
themselves liberated from every imaginable taboo, still succumb to that tired old convention that jeans are right for any occasion, provided denim is kept well away from those garments that symbolise status and power. Take men’s jackets for example. Denim is OK as the bottom half, but on top it shrieks working class. No one has ever seen a CEO in a blue denim jacket, at least not in this backwater of the universe. A denim jacket is working class par excellence. Fashion is a funny old world, it works to a very powerful unconscious logic. Yet, as over the years we have managed to give women jeans designed and cut especially for them, we can also bring this last barrier crashing down. Denim lends itself to revolution, indeed it is an icon of rebellion. It was there when the West was won, during the gold rush and it marched in protest over the Vietnam war. Then there was the women’s movement, when denim-clad women embarked on their mission to liberate their own body, itself the miraculous cladding for so many feelings, so much intelligence and courage, a great deal of courage indeed. Jeans played a crucial role in the history of feminism just as they marked a landmark in my own career. I created the very first jeans for women in the 1970s with the help of Mario Morelli, the great pattern-maker for Valentino, and the legendary Venucia De Russi, Italy’s most famous pattern-maker, now the benchmark for all denim manufacturers, including overseas. Now a pair of jeans like those is a classic, but then they were laden with social significance. It was much more difficult to show the body in those days, the only one who really broke the mould in what I would define as liberating the legs, was Mary Quant. Jeans for women, that made them look sexy in a very natural, unforced way, placing the female body centre stage, but not in a tasteless way, was the second step. And the secret was? Technically it was simply bringing the crotch slightly forward. As ever, the revolution was in the idea. Elio Fiorucci 9