America is Saved: Thanks to Levi-501 Jeans and the Mingei Museum

By Colleen O’Connor

Tired of the juvenile nature of Presidential politics that passes for dialogue? Same snarky insults? Same quick-fix ideas that solve nothing? The drumbeat of “retribution,” chaos, endless photo ops, and vague promises?

Ready to escape to something more enlightening? More spectacular, indeed “stunning” in beauty, history and optimism?

Here is the answer.

Granted the U.S has been seriously tested since the first landings of Pilgrims, Europeans, and the exploitation of plantation slavery in the U.S. and countries like India, many centuries ago.

That colonial history is still being tested.

Yet, the U.S. has survived slavery, wars, famine, brutality in all its forms, and still managed to conquer most evils in our midst.

Who, what, how, why and when can all be found in a stunning exhibition at the Mingei Museum in Balboa Park. All you need to do is look, listen and learn the easy way.

It starts with a plant. A green plant named Indigo from which deep blues are birthed.

Rich blues. Wealthy blues. Dark and light blues. Hence, the exhibition’s name “Indigo Blue Gold.”

Stare at designs, fabrics, stories and legends from centuries ago, across continents, where amid their own despair, “Blue Gold” was discovered and birthed its own history and optimism.

Indigo, itself, is a plant. Or as the Museum explains:

“Indigo, a varied plant family that grows worldwide and the deep, blue dye it produces, has a long and multifaceted history of cultivation, production, and distribution. Indigo is everywhere – in Japanese kimonos, West African traditional garments, saris from India, and painted onto architectural structures in the southern United States. Blue Gold combines craft, science, and history to explore this color’s complex past and present.

Several tattooing and body art traditions rely upon indigo.”

Stories and legends abound.

When the Japanese Emperor required fire-fighters to remove their tattoos, they simply added them to the inside of their fire-resistant indigo jackets.

Indigo blues morphed into a kind of mysticism and refined culture weaved into cloth of designs and hues from dark blues, near black blues, and soft delicate weaves of the lightest of blues.

The process of changing the green Indigo plant into the blue dyes on multiple fabrics, involves “botany, chemistry, ecology, and economics in indigo cultivation.”

Just look at the designs discover a deeper appreciation the blues.

As one Korean artist explained, “I think indigo is the color in which lives the spirit and soul of my people.”

And the blue jeans?

Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis in 1873 invented blue jeans in response to the need for laborers for durable men’s workwear.

Later, 501 jeans (Levis) revived the “Blue Gold” tradition and generated increased popularity and profit as the dye was used in the 1930s (cheap) and later during the war years for its durability. That popularity endures to this day.

So, cheer up. And thank your Jeans. An old plant saved us before. It might again. Indigo’s Blue Gold.