Men’s outfit, 1965 – 1971 (Jeans)
Description
Outfit comprising jeans and Hawaiian shirt, mens, cotton, jeans made by Amco, shirt made by BJ’s Fashion, Australia / Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, 1965-1971.
Mens outfit comprising blue denim jeans and printed cotton Hawaiian shirt.
Pair of straight legged blue denim jeans with waistband, belt loops and centre front fly closure. Amco label on back pocket.
Man’s short sleeved Hawaiian shirt featuring colourful abstracted print of black female silhoettes surfing and sunbathing at the beach on a ground of bright orange, yellow and red blocks. A pocket is on the left side of the chest and four gold buttons are at the front opening. The maker’s label is stitched to the collar.
Made: Amco; United States of America; 1965 – 1971
Statement of significance
A pair of mens blue denim Amco jeans dating from around 1965 and a Hawaiian shirt printed with scene of figures on a beach, dating from around 1971.
Denim jeans are perhaps the most popular and versatile fashion garment of the 20th century. Worn by men, women and children of all ages, jeans have a long and diverse history. This pair of Amco jeans was made and worn at the height of the Amco brands popularity in Australia and illustrates denim jeans status as a symbol of youthfullness and independance.
In the mid 1800s denim dungarees and jeans were worn as purely functional garments by prospectors on the California goldfields and later in the century as general workwear by farmers, cowboys and industrial workers in the USA. The emergence of denim in the casual clothing of suburban American’s in the 1930s and 1940s was in part due to the much admired image of the masculine free wheeling cowboy. American designer Claire McCardell also encouraged denim’s upmarket move through her innovative use of denim in her fashion ranges.
Denim’s mood changed once again in the 1950s when denim jeans appeared on icons of youthful rebellion and independance James Dean, Marlon Brando and Elvis Presley. Through the 1960s and 1970s they became the uniform of the young, the anti-fashion becoming part of the mainstream. Jeans brands became increasingly important and commensurately the manufacturers advertising budgets increased. Amco was the most popular label in Australia during the 1970s. The late 1970s introduced designer jeans to the catwalk with Calvin Klein trying to establish them as a high fashion garment with a high price tag. In the 1980s the influence of punk and Japanese designers saw jeans slashed and distressed and deconstructed. For a brief moment in the 1990s the media were predicting the demise of the blue jean due to decreasing sales but by the late 1990s a new generation of engineered jeans were emerging.
This Hawaiian shirt was inspired by filmmaker and surfer Bruce Brown’s cinema verite film ‘Endless Summer’which hit the film circuit in 1964 and was a huge success, even with the non surfing community. The film was essentially a tale of two surfers hitting the road, following the summer and the surf around the world from Africa and Australia to Tahiti and Hawaii. The film’s poster was designed by John Van Hammersveld a proponent of the pschedelic graphic style in the late 1960s and art director of Surfer magazine. Fashion marketers picked up on the films success and associations with youth culture with graphics and clothing that borrowed from the film aligning their goods with the surfing lifestyle. While the Endless Summer poster focussed on male surfers the shirt features female surfers and sunbathers.
Production notes
The design of jeans follows contemporary fashion trends and involves not only changes in style but also the fabric. This pair reflects the popularity of straight wide legged trousers in the 1970s and natural coloured denim. Later denims were to be acid washed, stone washed, distressed, bleached and patched.
The jeans were made by Amco. The Amco label was established in the USA in the 1960s, in 1979 it was purchased by Wrangler, which later sold it to the Hartman Group. In the mid 1980s Myer Grace Bros purchased the label and used it as their house brand. It is now owned by an Indonesian company and distributed in Australia by Boydex.
The Hawaiian shirt was inspired by filmmaker and surfer Bruce Brown ‘s cinema verite film ‘Endless Summer’ which hit the film circuit in 1964 and was a huge success, even with the non surfing community. The film’s poster was designed by John Van Hammersveld, a proponent of the pschedelic graphic style in the late 1960s and art director of ‘Surfer’ magazine. Fashion marketers picked up on the film’s success and associations with youth culture with graphics and clothing that borrowed from the film, aligning their goods with the surfing lifestyle. While the ‘Endless Summer’ poster focussed on male surfers, the shirt features female surfers and sunbathers.
The shirt was made by BJ’s Fashion in Honolulu, Hawaii, USA.
The jeans and shirt were made between 1965 and 1971.
History notes
The jeans and shirt were worn by the donor. The donor bought the jeans in Australia and the shirt in Honolulu, Hawaii, USA.
Read more: http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/collection/database/?irn=10115#ixzz25QvYlkyu
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution Non-Commercial
