How Jeans Conquered the World

Ask any group of people why they wear jeans and you will get a range of answers. For some they're comfortable, durable and easy—for others they're sexy and cool. Jeans mean different things to different people. Does this explain their wide appeal?

It is a subject that is relatively unstudied, says anthropologist Danny Miller, whose book Blue Jeans will be published next month.

In every country he visited—from the Philippines to Turkey, India and Brazil—Miller has stopped and counted the first 100 people to walk by, and in each he found that almost half the population wore jeans on any given day.