As more casual clothing styles took hold in the middle of the century, blue jeans became more mainstream. Civil rights leaders wore blue jeans, hippies wore blue jeans, and rock bands wore blue jeans. In fact, bands like Jefferson Airplane were making radio commercials for Levi's in the late 1960s.
In the US, denim became synonymous with equality and freedom, art historian Caroline A. Jones told Smithsonian Magazine in 2020.
"Youth activists ... used denim as an equalizer between the sexes and an identifier between social classes," she said.
But shifts were happening overseas, too. In East Germany during the Cold War, items like jeans were seen as "symbols of freedom, of independence, of being cool," German historian Gerd Horten previously told Insider.
Since sales of Levi's were banned in East Germany in the 1960s, a black market for the pants sprung up, with jeans going for as much as $500 a pop.
But by the late 1970s, East Germany's economy was crumbling and the government relented, requesting that Levi's ship nearly 800,000 pairs of jeans ahead of the holidays. Young Germans lined up to buy the denim, which cost 149 East German marks, equal to about $74 US at the time.