Jeans date back to 1650

Those who thought that a pair of jeans dates from recent years, are wrong. From a few paintings we know now that some kind of jeans was worn already back in 1650.

On the paintings we see a woman with a blue cloth, a blue skirt and a child with a blue vest. White seams can be seen on the blue tissues, a characteristic of an old, worn jeans. The paintings portray some poor families, which is remarkable. "Only the rich usually ordered paintings of themselves. It is very remarkable that poorer families are painted with such precision," says an art historian at the British newspaper Daily Mail.

The paintings clearly suggests that there already existed a pair of jeans in 1650, but where the tissue comes from is yet unclear. Some think that jeans were first made in Genoa, Italy, while others insist that jeans were first produced in Nîmes, France.