In the 1920s and 1930s, blue jeans culture fit in with the poverty-chic culture, the cowboy story culture, and the dude ranch culture. Starting in the 1940s, blue jeans became associated with altogether different cultures, first with Rosie the Riveter during World War II, and then with high school, youthful rebellion, and women’s liberation.34 The blue jeans fashion truly exploded in the 1950s,35 propelled to new heights by the hit 1955 movie Rebel Without a Cause and its handsome star James Dean, who died at age twenty-four, a month before the movie was released, while driving his sports car
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