Who Has Great Jeans? - The Denim Wars

By Burju Perez

It’s often said that fashion doesn’t just dress us, it also speaks. It tells a tale of existing political and cultural climates. In the case of denim, which is the most universal and common fabric, it carries a very weighty history. The latest American Eagle Sweeney saga has re ignited the need for a broader cultural conversation and a revisit of it's history.

The SweeneyXAmerican Eagle Jeans Ad: A Marketing Meltdown

American Eagle's July 2025 campaign “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans”, a pun on “genes” ignited controversy. One clip had Sweeney saying, “Genes are passed down from parents… My genes are blue,” before the tagline. Critics accused the campaign of invoking eugenic and white supremacist undertones, given its emphasis on conventionally attractive features like blonde hair and blue eyes. Conservative figures like Donald Trump hailed the campaign, calling it the “HOTTEST ad” on Truth Social. American Eagle responded with a statement on Instagram: “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans—has always been about the jeans... great jeans look good on everyone.” Some PR experts suggest the brand made missteps in haste.

In contrast, brands like Old Navy, Abercrombie and GAP responded with denim ads promoting inclusivity. The tag line for the Old Navy ad: “These are the jeans your other jeans warned you about... every size, every style”; Abercrombie: “denim should feel like being comfortable in your own skin”; Then Gap hit them with an infectious dance video featuring Katseye and a diversity of humans and dance styles. They were just missing some Burju Dance heels from our Denim Collection.

This controversy isn't just marketing misfire. It’s a flashpoint in a broader debate about race, representation, and corporate responsibility in a hyper-polarized moment.

Denim and Chattel Slavery- How enslaved labor built the foundation of blue jeans
Written by Tamara Rose for Burju Shoes

Blue jeans have become a symbol of American identity, work, and fashion, worn by millions around the globe. Yet, woven into the fabric of this iconic garment is a painful history, one directly tied to the brutal system of chattel slavery. While denim itself emerged as a popular fashion item long after the abolition of slavery, its essential components—the durable cotton fabric and the deep blue indigo dye—were products whose mass production relied entirely on the skills, knowledge, and forced labor of enslaved African people.

The story of the blue jean's raw materials is a powerful testament to how the economic engine of the antebellum American South, fueled by slavery, laid the groundwork for a global industry and the continued abuse and subjugation of Black people.

Indigo- The weed that started it all

Before cotton became "King," indigo was the most lucrative cash crop in the colonial American South. Indigofera tinctoria, a plant native to the tropics, was introduced to the colonies in the 1740s, primarily by Eliza Lucas Pinckney in South Carolina. She is credited with experimenting with its cultivation, but it was the specialized skills of West African enslaved people that made the crop a commercial success. Many West African nations had a rich history of cultivating indigo and producing dye, a knowledge system that was exploited for profit by plantation owners.

The production of indigo dye was a complex and dangerous process that required specialized knowledge and meticulous timing, which enslaved people possessed. The process involved several stages including its fermentation where the enslaved people who worked the vats often suffered from severe respiratory illnesses.

Historian David S. Shields notes that this process was so specialized that the skills of enslaved people who managed the indigo vats were crucial to the industry's success, making the knowledge of enslaved individuals an invaluable, and often unacknowledged, commodity. The indigo produced through this backbreaking labor made colonial planters immensely wealthy and established a massive export trade that provided the textile world with its most coveted blue dye.

Cotton and the expansion of Slavery

By the late 18th century, cotton began to eclipse indigo as the South's most profitable crop. The invention of the cotton gin in 1793 by Eli Whitney dramatically sped up the process of separating cotton fibers from seeds, making short-staple cotton a commercially viable and wildly profitable crop. However, this innovation did not reduce the need for enslaved labor; it exponentially increased it.

The cotton gin made processing easier, but the labor-intensive work of planting, weeding, and harvesting the crop remained entirely manual. The insatiable demand for cotton from textile mills in the northern United States and Great Britain fueled a massive expansion of slavery westward. Between 1790 and 1860, cotton production surged from 3,000 bales a year to over four million. This period saw a corresponding explosion in the enslaved population, with millions of African Americans forcibly moved from the Upper South to work on cotton plantations in the Deep South.

Enslaved people were not just a source of raw physical power; they brought and developed a deep understanding of agriculture, soil management, and the grueling cycle of cotton cultivation. Their expertise and backbreaking labor created the vast fortune of the plantation class and made the South the world's leading cotton producer.

Denim as we recognize it today—a sturdy, twill-woven cotton fabric dyed with indigo—did not become a staple of fashion until after the Civil War. Its popularization is credited to figures like Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis in the 1870s, who patented the design for riveted work pants. However, the commercial success of the blue jean was built on the foundation of an economic system that was, in turn, built on enslaved labor.

The textile mills that manufactured denim and other cotton goods relied on the cheap, abundant cotton harvested by enslaved people. Similarly, the brilliant blue color that defines jeans came from the indigo trade, which had been perfected and powered by the skills and lives of enslaved African individuals for over a century.

In the end, while enslaved people did not wear denim jeans as we know them today, they wore “jean cloth”, “negro cloth”, or “slave cloth”. This fabric was a precursor to what we know as jeans today. This fabric was used to make pants and overalls for enslaved people working in the fields. The durability of this fabric made it suitable for the demanding work performed by enslaved people, although it was often uncomfortable and worn as a uniform of control rather than a choice of clothing. This practice was a means of visually distinguishing the enslaved from the free population and could also aid in identifying those who escaped. The forced labor of the enslaved people produced the very materials that made the blue jean possible. The cotton they picked and the indigo they fermented were the essential threads that, centuries later, would be woven into a garment that became a global icon. The history of the blue jean is a powerful reminder that the legacy of slavery is woven into the very fabric of American commerce and culture.