What Jeans Looked Like the Year You Were Born

In 1934, Levi's introduced their first pair of women's jeans, which were worn mostly by women who lived on farms and ranches. Sixteen year later, jeans were still linked with that western vibe — but they also had an air of coolness to them. Thanks to Hollywood's popular western films and cowboys being very much in vogue, jeans started appearing in many movies and publicity shots, like this one of actress Jane Russell.

Likewise, actress Doris Day also wore jeans in her similarly western-inspired promotional image that Warner Brothers commissioned.

In the early '50s, Levi's started selling women's jeans more widespread throughout the country, while Marilyn Monroe made jeans even more popular by wearing her pair (cuffed, dark indigo, and super boxy) in the first film where she received top billing, Clash By Night.

By now jeans were really picking up steam for fashionable women, and women across the pond, too. Here, an early street style image of a young woman window shopping in London's Piccadilly neighborhood.

Princess Diana is often credited as being the first Princess to publicly wear jeans, but that's not true: Here Princess Alexandra of Kent wears jeans to play tennis at her family home in Buckinghamshire. Jeans as activewear: how far we've come.

Actress Gail Russell also wears boxy, cuffed jeans for outdoor activities.

Actress Joan Collins wore her jeans uncuffed — and significantly more fitted in the leg. She's famously said that she doesn't think women over 40 should wear blue jeans, but here, she's just 22 years old. (Also: we disagree with that statement of hers.)

Actress Debra Paget on the set of Love Me Tender, a western with musical numbers. Her jeans take us back to the cuffed hem, but are a lighter wash.

Brigitte Bardot was among the first women unable to resist pairing jeans with a simple white T-shirt. Perfection.

Italian actress Sandra Milo cements it: the jeans & white T-shirt look was A Thing.

Italian singer Mina wears a pair with a notably long hem, and no cuff.

Lucille Ball, in a Broadway production of Wildcat, reps more of the cuffed, boxy look, which makes sense because her character's supposed to be an oil miner. On the set of I Love Lucy, though, her jeans were more fitted and feminine.

Brigitte Bardot wears her pair slimmer in the leg, uncuffed, ushering in a decade of more bootcut styles.

Pauline Boty, the only female member of the British pop artist movement, kicks back in her bootcut pair. (Note the raw, unfinished hem.)

Goldie Hawn sporting what jean shorts used to look like.

Jean Seberg rolls her blue jeans and pairs with another iconic complement: the striped tee. (Seberg, an American originally, moved to France for a few years, and when asked by a Toledo newspaper what she missed most about the U.S., blue jeans were high on her list.)

Brigitte Bardot in her favorite style, the bootcut jean.

Model Jean Shrimpton keeps the bootcut look going strong.

This Levi's ad shows how lighter, brighter denim was coming into fashion.