Yoga and denim entwined: a timeline
Some say yoga pants and jeans are at war for fashion supremacy in the marketplace.
Yoga has been practised for about 2,500 years, but Vancouver’s
Lululemon ushered in the current craze for specialized stretch yoga pants in 1998.
If you are of the school of thought that everything old is new again,consider this: the term leggings has been around since at least the 14hcentury, when they were male garb. But women wore them to the gym,in the movies and on the street through much of the 1980s. Think Olivia Newton-John, Madonna and Jane Fonda.
Jeans were patented in 1873 and have been a fashion phenomenon since at least the 1950s, when James Dean and Marlon Brando made them a hallmark of youth and rebellion – in other words, cool. Since then they have gone through numerous style variations and innovations: bells, bumsters, hip-huggers, rips, embellishments, skinnies, floods, crops, a rainbow of colours, and most of all stretch. Which brings us to the intersection of yoga and denim. Here is a short history of yoga, yoga fashion and denim.
1873
Jacob Davis and Levi Strauss invent riveted denim pants, called jeans after Genoa in Italy, and denim after serge de Nîmes in France. They were meant to withstand the rigours of Gold Rush mining.
1947
Indra Devi opens a yoga studio in Hollywood, likely the first one in North America.
1953
Marlon Brando in The Wild One launches iconic outcast style in raw denim jeans, black motorcycle jacket and white T.
1955
In his Lee jeans, James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause becomes a symbol of youth rebellion. High schools across the U.S. ban jeans, and they become more popular.
1959
A revolution in comfort is born as DuPont develops a stretch fibre that became known as elastane, spandex or Lycra.
1967
The Beatles meet Indian guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The following year they travel to his ashram in Rishikesh in northern India to learn transcendental meditation.
1969
At the landmark Woodstock festival, Swami Satchidananda opens Woodstock by sharing a prayer of peace and love.
1970
Ram Dass – formerly Richard Alpert – tours American college campuses. His book Be Here Now becomes the guide for a generation’s spiritual quest.
1970s
Bell bottoms reign in denim style.The hippie movement also embraces embroidered, patched and faded jeans.
1975
The first edition of Yoga Journal is published.
1978
Olivia Newton-John wears shiny black leggings in the musical Grease.
1978
Peter Golding, a British designer, is credited with inventing the first stretch denim jean, which he sold at his ACE boutique on the King’s Road. The shop was frequented by the Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Omar Sharif, Julie Christie and Elizabeth Taylor.
1979
The age of designer denim arrives with names like Valente, Jordache, and Sasson, Gloria Vanderbilt and Calvin Klein.
1980
“You want to know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing:” Brooke Shields says in the iconic Calvin Klein ad.
1982
Jane Fonda's Workout sparks a craze for aerobic exercise. Women don stretch leggings to sweat it out.
1980s
Eric Wazana remembers buying his first jeans, Levis 501s. As soon as he got home, he started beating them to soften and distress the rough fabric.
1990s
Hip-hop and grunge are the prevailing cultural winds, and denim takes its cue with oversized, baggy jeans, overalls and ripped or destroyed denim. The biggest, baggiest and most clownish were probably JNCO jeans, which went out of business at the turn of the millennium. Balenciaga revived the style in 2015.
1994
Madonna wears Alexander McQueen’s bumster jeans in an MTV ad.
1998
In Vancouver, Chip Wilson makes and sells the first Lululemon yoga pants, a simple mix of nylon and Lycra.
1999
Tom Ford for Gucci causes a sensation with ripped, frayed and feathered jeans that retail for $3,000 U.S.
2000
Supermodel Christy Turlington launches the Nuala line of yoga clothing.
2000
Eric Wazana starts in the clothing business. His brother Jacob joins him in the business one year later.
2000
Hip-baring low-risers are championed by the likes of JLo, Beyoncé and Britney Spears. Teenage girls will soon adopt the trend with a frenzy.
2000s
Premium jeans, mostly made in L.A., take hold, pushing prices up to $200, $300 and way more. Women are game to try the purported butt-lifting properties of pricey jeans.
2002
Yoga is in full swing in Canada, and fashion to match it is gaining traction. In Montreal, Lolë is launched.
Mid-2000s
The skinny jean arrives – and has yet to leave.
2007
The Wazanas set out to create the most comfortable jeans possible and come up with the concept of Yoga Jeans. “What if you could do yoga poses in jeans? That was the benchmark,’’ Eric says.
2009
Jeggings, a marriage of leggings and jeans become a phenom.
2009
The first Yoga Jeans come to market. The prototype diagonal stretch is the result of cutting the fabric on the bias.
2010s
The term athleisure, first coined in the 1970s, becomes the category du jour, the result of fabric technology, preoccupation with health and the relaxation of dress codes.
2011
The Wazanas open a factory in the Beauce region of Quebec, 200 miles east of Montreal.
2013
Oops. Lululemon recalls its pants for being too sheer.
2014
Athleisure is at its peak, and women start to wear stretchy tight pants from the gym to the grocery store, and everywhere else. There is very little blowback, as there was in earlier decades.
2016
Yoga Journal finds that more than 36 million people in the U.S. practise yoga.
2019
Skinny and flared, clean and distressed jeans co-exist with stretch pants and leggings. The leggings are sometimes rendered in denim printed fabric and the stretchy jeans can be as tight and comfy as a spandex pant. Eco jeans, those produced ethically and cleanly, are the next big thing.