Timeline
The history of the fabric that has marked the evolution of fashion more than any other in recent times was born in Genoa: JEANS.
Earliest artistic evidence of Jeans fabric (Tela Genova).
Paintings and tapestries depict images of “Tela Genova” clothing.
Jeans began to be used to make clothes for nativity scene figurines, opening up new horizons.
The oldest jeans in history, belonging to Giuseppe Garibaldi, are currently preserved at the Central Museum of the Risorgimento inside the Vittoriano (Rome).
History
Thinking about the city of Genoa, who has ever stopped to consider the importance it has held in the evolution of modern-day customs? Perhaps only a few! At the end of the 15th century, Christopher Columbus began his adventure in Genoa, discovering new worlds. However, it was also in Genoa during the same period that the story of the fabric that has marked the evolution of fashion more than any other in recent times was born: jeans.
1500
CLOTHS DEPICTING THE PASSION
The oldest and most precious testimony is the series of cloths on which, in the first decades of the sixteenth century, the Passion Stories were depicted on a background of linen dyed with indigo.
1600
PICTORIAL TESTIMONIES
Numerous are the 18th-century works in which people dressed in blue Genoese cloth are depicted.
1700
CLOTHING FOR NATIVITY SCENE FIGURINES
The jeans used to make the clothing for the figurines truly opens up new horizons for understanding Genoese production in the 18th century. Numerous are the 18th-century works depicting people dressed in blue Genoese cloth. The Master of Jeans Fabric, active in Lombardy in the mid-17th century, further illustrates this.
1800
GIUSEPPE GARIBALDI’S JEANS
The oldest jeans in the world. In Liguria around the nineteenth century, about 30,000 people derived their annual livelihood from cotton work and the weaving of Tela Genova.
