As the American middle class settled into suburbia during the 1950s, denim suddenly became controversial. The influence of films like 1955’s Rebel Without a Cause (and the jeans worn in the movie by James Dean) caused denim to be equated with teenage rebellion and delinquency. The denim industry worked to counteract these negative connotations—by founding The Denim Council, for example—but from the 1950s on, denim’s cultural identity has been dominated by countercultural and street-style associations.
This was especially true of the hippie movement of the 1960s. For the hippies, clothing was a canvas for political expression, and denim was their ubiquitous fabric. The hippies’ use of denim established trends that long outlived the movement, such as bell-bottom jeans, embroidered and patched denim, and faded, pre-worn jeans.