In the 1970s, jeans weren’t considered presidential. Former President Gerald R. Ford, a square-jawed Republican, wore stocky suits, and while it’s possible that Lyndon Johnson or John F. Kennedy wore denim in the Oval Office, there is no record of them in Levi’s as they held the nation’s highest office.
Then came President Jimmy Carter.
“Jeans are an authentic part of Carter’s character,” The New York Times wrote of Mr. Carter’s clothes in 1976, just as he was about to be elected president, completing the unlikely journey from his roots as a Georgia peanut farmer. Jeans never stopped being part of Mr. Carter’s character. Up to the end of his life, work shirts and bluejeans were staples of Mr. Carter’s uniform, especially as he spent some of his post-presidency building homes with Habitat for Humanity.
Mr. Carter, the 39th president of the United States who died on Sunday, would prove to be an Oval Office trendsetter. Nearly all the presidents who followed him were captured wearing jeans while in office. Ronald Reagan, who walloped Mr. Carter at the polls, sealing the peanut farmer’s fate as a one-term president, was a double-denim fashion plate. Later, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama all wore washed denim in office (although Mr. Obama was plagued by accusations that his looked more akin to “dad jeans”).
Mr. Carter could be credited with shepherding jeans to the political stage as a uniform — or, possibly, a costume — of all-American, hardworking humility. There is a direct throughline from Mr. Carter’s bluejeaned modesty to politicians like Marco Rubio and Pete Buttigieg stumping in jeans as a signal that they’re different than those cloistered suits in Washington.
But unlike many of the politicians that followed, Mr. Carter was genuine in his down-home image. A child of the Bible Belt, he was raised in a house without running water or electricity. One of Mr. Carter’s early chores was milking cows, an activity calling for something as durable as denim.
A farmer well before he became a politician, Mr. Carter availed himself of every opportunity to demystify the American presidency. He banned the tradition of playing “Hail to the Chief” as he walked into rooms, carried his own bags onto Air Force One and walked hand in hand with his wife through the streets during his inaugural parade.
In settings regal and rural alike, Mr. Carter’s jeans bespoke hard work and grit. While in jeans, he played baseball, assessed his peanut farm and lugged watermelons — activities captured by the watchful eye of the press corps. He mingled denim with diplomacy, wearing jeans to dialogue with President Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt on what would become the landmark Camp David peace accords. To his constituents, jeans were an indigo emblem that Mr. Carter was, above all, a son of Plains, Ga.
It isn’t clear if Mr. Carter had a favored denim brand, though images of the former president suggest that he was a Levi’s man. In the ’70s, Levi’s was producing its jeans in the United States. It would be a couple decades before most American clothing companies would offshore their production. The Washington Post reported in 1977 that Mr. Carter’s jeans were a size 33 inch waist and 31 inch length.
Mr. Carter’s jeans also nodded to his curious countercultural chumminess. His White House was a revolving door of musicians including Willie Nelson, Gregg Allman and Johnny Cash. He might not have been the first president to befriend rock stars, but he may have been the first one to, at least occasionally, dress like them. If the jeans telegraphed to blue-collar Americans that Mr. Carter was one of them, they also could’ve helped the middle-aged farmer appear somewhat hip to voters half his age.
As the 1976 Times article stated, “Not lost on his political advisers is the fact that jeans register contradictory impressions with the young people around Harvard Square and the farmers in Iowa.”
Mr. Carter’s jeans were controversial enough that Barbara Walters was compelled to press him about them in an interview. “That’s my normal attire,” Mr. Carter answered. Then still president-elect, Mr. Carter assured the public that he would “not embarrass the nation by having a formal conference with the French ambassador and my wearing bluejeans and his wearing a morning coat.”
That’s not to say he left his folksiness on the peanut farm. In the first blush of his administration, Mr. Carter would sit by a fire, addressing the nation in a sweater and tie, as if styled by Fred Rogers.
In an exit interview cataloged in Mr. Carter’s presidential library, Jeanne Flick, a correspondence clerk who served in his administration, reflected on his style: “He’s so comfortable looking all the time.”
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