新闻周刊:牛仔裤的真实成本(2)（在线收听）

Barring basics such as underwear and socks, blue jeans are the most popular garment ever. They are what many of the Rana Plaza workers in Bangladesh were sewing or inspecting when the building came crashing down on April 23, 2013, killing 1,134 and injuring 2,500 workers, making it the deadliest garment factory accident in modern history. Jeans were the backbone of American textile and garment manufacturing, until Levi's offshored those jobs. They are also hyper-polluting—in their creation, and in their afterlife.

除了内衣和袜子等基本款，蓝色牛仔裤是有史以来最流行的服装。2013年4月23日，孟加拉国拉纳广场发生倒塌事故，造成1134人死亡，2500人受伤，这是现代史上伤亡人数最多的服装厂事故。牛仔裤曾是美国纺织和服装制造业的支柱，直到李维斯将这些工作转移到海外。在创造和使用中，也是高度污染的。

Jeans embody all that is good, bad and awry in fashion.

牛仔裤体现了时尚界所有的好、坏、歪的东西。

Nothing Comes Between Me and My Calvins

没有什么能把我和我的Calvins分开

Denim remained a niche textile until the early 1870s, when a tailor named Jacob Davis asked his fabric supplier, Levi Strauss, for help mass-producing his most recent design: workpants with metal rivets at key stress points. If Strauss would cover the hefty $68 patenting fee, Davis proposed, the two men could be business partners. Today, Levi Strauss & Co. still design and sell the majority of jeans. It is one of the most successful apparel brands, ever.

牛仔布一直是一种小众纺织品，直到19世纪70年代初，一位名叫雅各布·戴维斯的裁缝请他的布料供应商李维·施特劳斯帮忙量产他最新的设计:在关键受力点有金属铆钉的工作裤。戴维斯提议，如果斯特劳斯能够支付68美元的高额专利费，两人就可以成为商业伙伴。今天，李维斯公司仍然设计和销售大部分牛仔裤。它是有史以来最成功的服装品牌之一。

And blue jeans' popularity steadily grew, until they received an unexpected bump in the 1970s—from all places, Seventh Avenue.

蓝色牛仔裤的受欢迎程度稳步上升，直到20世纪70年代，意外地受到来自第七大道各地的欢迎。

With the women's liberation movement and the popularity of more casual dress, New York's fashion designers dreamed up a new fashion category: designer jeans. "Jeans are sex," Calvin Klein said. "The tighter they are, the better they sell."

随着妇女解放运动和休闲服装的流行，纽约的时装设计师们想出了一个新的时尚类别:名牌牛仔裤。“牛仔裤就是性感，”Calvin Klein说。“越紧，卖得越好。”

To hammer home his point, in 1980, Klein cast 15-year-old actress-model Brooke Shields for his jeans commercial. "You want to know what comes between me and my Calvins?" she purred in her childlike voice, as she sat spread-eagle in a pair of his jeans and a taupe blouse. "Nothing." The ad was so provocative, the New York affiliates of ABC and CBS promptly banned it. But it had already worked its spell: Klein sold 400,000 pairs the week following the ad's debut, then two million a month after that. Jean sales rocketed to record heights: more than half a billion were purchased in 1981 alone.

为了强调他的观点，1980年，克莱因让15岁的女演员、模特波姬·小丝为他的牛仔裤广告代言。“你想知道我和Calvins之间的关系吗?”她穿着他的牛仔裤和灰褐色上衣，像一只展翅的老鹰，坐在那里，用孩子般的声音发出呼噜呼噜的声音。“没什么。”这则广告如此具有挑衅性，以至于美国广播公司和哥伦比亚广播公司的纽约分公司立即将其封杀。但它已经发挥了它的魔力:在广告发布后一周，Klein卖出了40万条，之后一个月卖出了200万条。牛仔裤的销量飙升到创纪录的高度:仅在1981年就售出了5亿多件。