Restricted accessResearch articleFirst published online 2004-11
A Garment in the Dock;or,How the FBI Illuminated the Prehistory of A Pair of Denim Jeans (Winner of the Journal of Material Culture Alfred Gell essay competition 2004)
This article looks at research carried out at the FBI Laboratory’s Special
Photographic Unit in the identification of denim trousers from bank surveillance
film. This research, which was published in 1998, showed that despite the ubiquity
of jeans, each pair has individual identifying characteristics caused by the
manufacturing process and by wear, and that these might be used as evidence in the
identification of criminal suspects. What the FBI research also inadvertently
illuminated was an otherwise hidden relationship between garment, maker and wearer,
in an effective - if accidental - reversal of commodity fetishism.
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