In the 1970s, jeans were not considered presidential. Former President Gerald R. Ford, a square-jawed Republican, wore squat suits, and while it is 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 were the highest positions in the country. office.
Then along 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, marking the unlikely journey from his roots as a peanut farmer to Georgia completed. Jeans have always been part of Mr. Carter’s character. Until the end of his life, work shirts and jeans were staples of Mr. Carter’s uniform, especially because he spent part of his post-presidency building houses for Habitat for Humanity.
Mr. Carter, the 39th president of the United States who died on Sunday, would prove to be a trendsetter from the Oval Office. Nearly all the presidents who followed him were caught wearing jeans while in office. Ronald Reagan, who delivered a blow to Mr. Carter at the election, sealing the peanut farmer’s fate as one-term president, was a double-denim fashion picture. Later, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama all wore washed denim while in office (although Obama was plagued by accusations that his clothes looked more like “dad jeans”).
It could be said that Mr. Carter ushered the jeans onto the political stage as a uniform — or possibly a costume — of pure American, hard-working humility. There is a direct line between Mr. Carter’s modesty and politicians like Marco Rubio and Pete Buttigieg who strut in jeans as a signal that they are different from those cloistered suits in Washington.
But unlike many of the politicians who followed, Mr. Carter was sincere in his down-home image. As a child of the Bible Belt, he grew up in a home without running water or electricity. One of Mr. Carter’s first jobs was milking cows, an activity that required something as durable as denim.
Mr. Carter was a farmer before he became a politician and took 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 both royal and rural settings, Mr. Carter is the epitome of hard work and perseverance. In jeans, he played baseball, assessed his peanut farm and lugged watermelons – activities captured by the watchful eye of the press corps. Mixing denim with diplomacy, he wore jeans during a dialogue with President Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt on what would become the historic Camp David peace accords. To his constituents, jeans were an indigo emblem that Mr. Carter was, above all, a son of Plains, Georgia.
Images of the former president suggest he was a Levi’s man, and according to the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum, the president had a favorite Levi’s denim jacket. An aide to Mr. Carter confirmed to the library that the denim jacket was still in the president’s closet in 2019. When the library contacted Mr. Carter to see if he would be interested in donating it, “he declined because he was still using it.”
Mr. Carter was also photographed in Wrangler jeans, according to an email from the library, although it said there are no examples currently in the collection.
In the ’70s, jeans companies loved it Levi’s and Wrangler produced their denim in the United States. It would be another few decades before most American apparel companies would offshore their production. The Washington Post reported in 1977 that Mr. Carter’s jeans had a waist size of 33 inches and a length of 31 inches.
Mr. Carter’s jeans also nodded to his curious countercultural camaraderie. His White House was a revolving door of musicians like Willie Nelson, Gregg Allman and Johnny Cash. He may not have been the first president to befriend rock stars, but he may have been the first to dress like one, at least occasionally. If the Jeans had telegraphed to American workers that Mr. Carter was one of them, they could also have made the middle-aged farmer seem somewhat hip to voters half his age.
As the 1976 Times article stated, “What is not lost on his political advisers is the fact that jeans evoke conflicting impressions among the young people around Harvard Square and the farmers of Iowa.”
Mr. Carter’s jeans were so controversial that Barbara Walters was forced to call him out on it in an interview. “That’s my normal attire,” Mr. Carter replied. The then-president-elect, Mr. Carter, assured the audience that he would “not embarrass the nation by holding a formal conference with the French Ambassador and that I would wear jeans and he would wear a morning suit.”
That doesn’t mean he left his folksiness on the peanut farm. At the first glance of his administration, Mr. Carter sat by a fire and addressed the nation in a sweater and tie, as if styled by Fred Rogers.
In an exit interview recorded at the Presidential Library of Mr. Carter, Jeanne Flika correspondence clerk who worked in his administration reflected on his style: “He always looks so comfortable.”
