Ian Berry’s Denim Legends
Overview X Jonathan Christoper X TWOOD DENIM LEGENDS Living Room Giant Jacket
Denim Legends
It’s probably worth starting by saying, what you see here is not the final piece.
Ian Berry has been spending much of 2021 researching and making many of the iconic faces that made denim what it is today. Wonder why you go and pull out that pair of jeans from your wardrobe? Here is a large part of the answer.
Karl Lagerfeld once bemoaned, “Sweatpants are a sign of defeat.” After working from home for so long many may feel that, but as we start to go out exercising our freedoms and try to squeeze into those jeans again, has anyone thought – why?
We’ll stare into a wardrobe whether they’re a cheap fast fashion pair or a premium label and give little thought to how this hard-wearing material, that in many ways made so little sense, became our most favourite fabric and our go-to garment.
British Artist Ian Berry is creating a piece out of the material where he made his name to celebrate the faces behind the history of the fabric. DENIM. He’s spent the last year asking experts for their all-time Denim Legends from pop culture, along with his own knowledge from working with this material for over 15 years.
You can fill in your own answers here
Ian Berry has already created dozens of portraits all crafted out of the material the subjects made famous. He is now asking more people who should be in, even rejecting some he’s already made to fit more in, from Brooke Shields to Bardot, Marley to Moss, McQueen to the material girl living in her material world, Madonna. But who would you like to see included? Ian Berry asks now in Textil Museet, Sweden. Should it be the more well-known musicians of the 50’s and 60’s or the Cowboy actors or those who portrayed the rebel like Dean, Brando, Eastwood and Hopper? Perhaps the sexy leading ladies like Monroe and Lollobrigida. There’s the writers like Beat Kerouac and even artists like Warhol, Pollock and Britain’s Peter Blake who made their own impact.
‘I’ve made many already, while a lot of the obvious ones are missing. I want to ask more people to help create the final piece and be very inclusive, but also quite strict. Denim is so linked with America and even Hollywood so naturally many are from the USA. I’m interested in who people suggest from their own countries. However, it is what impact they made on the world, and for example I tried to get some from Japan as they are denim mad! That love for the material was also post war and looking toward America and the actors and the American GI’s wearing jeans.’
photo by Lennart Sjöberg
Ian Berry is correct in saying it was the American Pop Culture that helped spread the jeans revolution. In Japan by the '50s, students started exploring makeshift stores at US military outposts. But what about other regions? Bardot and Halliday in France to Marley in Jamaica and of course the UK is present with 70’s punk to Kate Moss’s skinny jeans. But the question is, who should join them as the all-time influencers of denim?
‘For me it isn’t about fame now. It’s being true to the story and who made an impact then. On my own list I had for example Monty Clift on, then off, then on again. He was one of the biggest names in his day but has now been more or less lost to history. He was a keen denim wearer but when I found out one of the most pivotal moments in denim was down to him. I loved the idea of immortalising him. When Marilyn Monroe wore the denim jacket on the set of Misfits which I think was of the most important moments for women with denim, it was actually his jacket he’d leant her. Not many people know that.’
At Textil Museet the piece is shown as an installation - but its not complete, there will be 20-30 portraits added in denim, and unlike any time before, you can make the difference and direct Ian Berry who to make. The pieces is surrounded by denim plants but of interest is the mannequins in the foreground giving hints of famous looks from the stars, or movements, like Monroe’s Lee Rider Jacket, Brando’s jeans and biker leather, Hendix’s frays to punk.
