Italian JeansPaperback, 10 September 2013

The story of how a garment made of cloth became a fashion accessory.
After emigrating from Italy to America in the middle of the nineteenth century, jeans came home after the Second World War bringing with them the image and values of the American dream. Prosperity, opportunity, a feeling of liberation, hope: the myth seemed to have been cut out of the same indigo-dyed cloth.
Young Italians fell in love with jeans at first sight, made them their own, and turned them from the off-duty uniform of American soldiers into a symbol of freedom and democracy 'made in the USA.'
Starting from these premises, the volume sets out to reconstruct the translations, loans, adjustments, and innovations that have characterized the Italian version of the image of American jeans, culminating in the worldwide success of Italian brands like Diesel and Replay and the transformation of a product conceived for leisure into a fashion accessory.