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Who can imagine a life without denim? The popularity of the fabric may have started in the gold mines of California in the mid 1800's, but jeans fever has spread all over the world since then. What began life, as a utilitarian cloth made to withstand hard labor is now a fashion statement.

Denim is among the most versatile of fabrics. It can be unwashed and dark, or stonewashed to a lighter shade. It can be one of the many other colors than indigo blue, especially black or white. It can be open-end spun or, for a softer and stronger hand, ring spun. It can be woven as right-hand twill as it has been historically, or as left-handed twill for a softer fabric, or as broken twill, which is used by Wrangler.

Denim, as the fabric we know today, started out as one of two fabrics used by Levi Strauss in the 1850's for work clothes. However, the denim for the waist-high overalls, the old name for jeans, came from the Amoskeag mfg. Co., in Manchester, N.H. The company, which shut its doors on Dec. 31, 1935, started making denim fabrics in the mid 1860s.

When Levi Strauss and his partner, Jacob Davis (inventor of riveted apparel), started making copper-riveted waist-high overalls, they used a brown cotton duck fabric and denim. By the turn of the century, denim was winning out over the duck because it was a stronger fabric and was more comfortable - and became even more comfortable after washing.

Over the century, fashion trends have been a lot like waves, rising and falling with the tides of popular interest. But in all the coming and going, one thing has remained a constant in the American wardrobe - blue jeans. After Levi Strauss, the next big player in the history of denim was H.D. Lee, an investor from Vermont who sewed together jackets and dungarees for his chauffeur, who was tired of cleaning his uniform. Hence the beginning of the Lee Union-All, a one-piece denim work-wear garment. In 1917, the U.S. Army contracted Lee to make as many Union-Alls as possible for official fatigues. Lee's motto became "The jeans that built America."

In 1922, the reputation of jeans as work-wear was made official with the founding of Williamson-Dickie Co., a denim company that made jeans specifically for the working-class American. Jeans weren't only the uniform of blue- collar workers. They were also the uniform of the American cowboy. In the 1940s a company called Wrangler began making jeans especially for cowboys. But it was not until the 1950s that jeans became a fashion commodity, largely due to Hollywood icons like Marlon Brando and James Dean. These cool, rebellious actors represented a breaking-away from social constraints, and young wannabes across the country copied their casual jeans and T-shirt look.

By the 1960s, jeans were moving closer to the fashion market. With the country in political and social upheaval, jeans were the chosen apparel for young people protesting the war in Vietnam or celebrating at Woodstock. The 60s also marked the opening of America's first jeans retailer-turned manufacturer; the Gap. Founded in 1969 by Donald Fisher; the Gap originally sold only Levi's. When it finally launched its own private jeans label in 1974, denim grew to 98 percent of the company sales. It wasn't until 1991 that Levi's were dropped entirely from the Gap's jeans the Gap's jeans offering.

In the late 1970's, jeans sales reached an all-time high. Responding to a consumer demand for denim, designers began signature jeans. Despite the fact that his Calvin Klein cost 50 percent more than Levi's, consumers bought 200,000 pairs the first week the jeans were on the market.

By 1980 a whole list of players joined the designer jeans market. Guess, a hot line founded by the French-born Marciano brothers in 1982, was one of the first to pioneer stonewashing in its line of jeans. Marithe and Francois Girbaud were among the first jeans makers to experiment with bleaching. The 90's saw a whole new designer denim decade, as Polo, DKNY, Tommy Hilfiger and Kenneth Cole all spawned jeans collections.

An alphabetical glossary will put you well on your way to understanding what makes denim.

Broken Twill: a 3x1 weave where the traditional twill rib does not run in a straight diagonal line, but rather changes direction. This reduces fabric torque, which prior to skewing technology (see skewing) reduced leg twisting.

Carding process during which cotton fibers are cleaned and paralleled.

Cotton Fiber: all denim begins with cotton fiber - ideally fiber that has a uniform fineness and length that will give the yarn strength and dye ability. Yarns are spun using either ring-spinning or open-end spinning equipment. (See ring spun and open-ended.)

Faux ring spun: a variation of the open-ended technique that makes final denim fabric appear to be ring spun, but without the inherent strength, softness and flatness of real ring spun.

Filling yarn: also known as the weft yarn, it runs from selvage to selvage at right angles to the warp yarn.

Left-handed twill: a twill weave which produces a diagonal line, or twill line, running from the lower right to the upper left.

Open ended: often referred to by the initials OE, open ended spinning is an efficient yarn spinning technology introduced in the 1970s that skips several processes, making the yarn faster and less expensive to produce. Cotton fibers are "mock twisted" by blowing them together, creating bulkier yarns and thus building, coarser denim. Also without uniform twisting, open-ended yarns lack the strength of ring spun yarns.

Plain weave: executed by passing each filling yarn successively over and under each warp yarn, alternating each row. Also called one-up-one down weave.

Right-hand twill: Denim weave which produces a diagonal line, or twill line, that rises from the lower left to the upper right. Most ring-spun denim is right hand twill; although left hand twill is growing in demand.

Ring/OE: denim making technique in which ring spun yarns are spun together. In this process, the warp yarn, (or length-wise yarn) is ring-spun, while the weft yarn (or filling yarn) is open-end spun. The result is a softer denim than open ended, but without the unique characteristics inherent in ring-ring denim.

Ring-Ring: (see ring-spun) Denim making technique in which both warp (lengthwise) and weft (filling) yarns woven together are ring-spun yarns.

Ring-spun: the original type of denim fabric, woven using ring-spun yarns, which are uniformly twisted and, as a result, stronger. (Think about how easy it is to pull apart a cotton ball, but if the cotton ball is twisted before you pull, it's much stronger.) Ring yarns produce denim with desirable unevenness that gives jeans an authentic vintage look. Ring spun denim is softer, stronger and has greater character than open-ended denim.

Roving: process during yarn making in which the cotton fiber (see 'Sliver') is drafted into smaller and finer form.

Selvage: the narrow woven edge of fabric parallel to the warp that prevents raveling.

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