Denim spent roughly a century as work clothing before anyone thought of it as fashion. The clearest evidence of that period sits in a US government photography archive: more than 170,000 negatives commissioned by the Farm Security Administration to document working America through the Depression years.
Editors Graham Marsh and Tony Nourmand went through that archive looking for one thread, and found it everywhere. Nearly everyone in the photographs is wearing denim. Denim: The Fabric That Built America, 1935–1944 collects two hundred fifty of those images.
What is the FSA photography archive?
The Farm Security Administration was a New Deal agency, and part of its remit was documentary: photographers were sent across the country to record rural poverty, migrant labor, and the conditions of ordinary working people. The resulting image bank runs to over 170,000 negatives and is one of the most extensive photographic records of any nation in any period.
It was made as evidence, not as art or as fashion documentation. That is exactly why it works as a record of what people actually wore. Nobody in these frames was styled.
Why is everyone in the photographs wearing denim?
Because it was the cheapest durable cloth available, and because the American workwear industry had spent the previous sixty years building around it. Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis patented riveted work pants in 1873. By the 1930s, Levi's, Wrangler, Lee, OshKosh, and Carhartt were clothing the workforce.
The people in the book are field hands, dam builders, out-of-work miners, and women working the Chicago railroad. Denim was not a choice they made about identity. It was the fabric that survived the job.
What the photographs show that catalogues don't
Every image in the book was rescanned from the original negatives, and the detail is the reason to look. What comes through is construction:
- the heft of the weave, and how differently it hangs when it's genuinely heavy
- white stitching against indigo, a contrast that later became a styling decision but started out as just whatever thread was on hand
- cuffed hems, on garments bought long and worn down
- selvedge edges, before selvedge was a selling point
These are the same details the Japanese denim industry set out to reproduce decades later, working from surviving American garments and old shuttle looms. If you have read our guide to Japanese denim, this book is the source material those brands were studying.
When did denim stop being workwear?
There is no single date, but the shift is usually placed in the postwar decades, denim moving from the job site to youth culture, then to the runway. The 1935–1944 window this book covers sits just before that turn.
That is what makes the archive useful rather than nostalgic. You are looking at the garment doing the thing it was designed for, photographed by people who were not interested in it as a garment at all.
The book
- Hardcover, 240 pages
- 9.25 × 11.2 in, b&w and color
- Reel Art Press, 2024
- ISBN 9781909526976
Denim: The Fabric That Built America sits in our KNOWLEDGE collection, alongside the rest of the reference shelf.
Frequently asked questions
What is the FSA photography archive?
A collection of over 170,000 negatives commissioned by the US Farm Security Administration to document working America during the Depression years, roughly 1935 to 1944.
When was denim invented?
Denim cloth predates the jean. The riveted work pant that became the modern jean was patented by Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis in 1873.
What denim brands appear in the photographs?
Levi's, Wrangler, Lee, OshKosh, and Carhartt. These were the companies clothing the American workforce in the 1930s and 40s.
What is selvedge denim?
Denim woven on a shuttle loom, producing a self-finished edge that doesn't fray. It was standard in the era these photographs document and later became a marker of quality in Japanese reproduction denim.
Is this book about fashion?
No. It documents denim as work clothing, photographed before denim was understood as fashion at all.
sabi is an online boutique based in Portland, Oregon. Our KNOWLEDGE collection is the reference shelf, books on the things we sell and the ideas underneath them.