Working Titles takes a closer look at specific films with a denim and workwear aesthetic with the goal of examining the material’s shifting cultural image.

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Every generation has its coming-of-age stories. Nuances vary from generation to generation but the same underlying story arc is eternal. A teenager is faced with the prospect of adulthood, an unknown abyss of responsibilities and rules, and an existential crisis ensues. There is often a love story woven into the plot, navigating the evolving intricacies of romance as they change from childhood to adulthood.

Humans have been telling coming-of-age stories for millennia, with examples surviving from as far as Ancient Greece and the oral tradition likely going back far further. However, the cinematic coming-of-age template was created less than a century ago in 1995’s Rebel Without A Cause. 

Wardrobe Change

The first thing that people often misunderstand about Rebel Without A Cause is that James Dean’s starring role as Jim is not the titular Rebel. In fact, the title is a reference to the entire generation represented by Jim and his fellow high school students. History has dubbed them the Silent Generation, those who were born between the start of the Great Depression in 1929 and the end of World War II in 1945. Rebel Without A Cause was created to give a voice to the Silent Generation by depicting the struggles it faced growing up in the shadow of the greatest economic catastrophe and the greatest conflict in modern human history. To understand the film is to understand the generation. 

A great way to understand any generation is to analyze its fashion. How people dress tells you a great deal about how they think, both on an individual and generational scale. If you are looking to examine the fashion of the Silent Generation, then Rebel Without A Cause is the best place to start. Dean’s red jacket, white t-shirt, jeans, and boots have come to symbolize the cool menswear of the 1950s. His insouciantly slicked-back hair, sharp cheekbones, and chiseled jawline stand as a paradigm of male beauty to this day. Yet the transition from how Dean’s character Jim dresses at the beginning of the film to how he arrives at that iconic look is a principal message of the film. It is also a fundamental example of using wardrobe as a storytelling device to elaborate on a character’s development.

Dean begins the film in a black wool suit, a white collared shirt, and a burgundy knit tie held in place by a tie pin. This was standard issue evening wear for American men in the 1950s. Back then, social norms dictated that men wouldn’t dare leave the house without a collared shirt and more often than not, a jacket. Next, we see Dean headed to school in a brown-flecked tweed blazer, not dissimilar from the herringbone tweed worn by the police officer questioning him in the opening scene. This congruent wardrobe represents the fact that teenage boys were meant to dress the same way as adult men in the polite society of the 1950s. 

On his way to school, Jim crosses paths with his love interest Judy for the first time after meeting in the police station. The two banter flirtatiously, with Judy dropping the line, “Who lives?” in response to Jim asking where she lives. Judy’s friends arrive in a black convertible, at which point we find out that Judy hangs out with a rebellious group known as The Kids. The gang of misfits loaded into the black convertible are clothed in a lookbook of 1950s counterculture style. 

Leather and Denim

The Kids are meant to be a representation of the outliers within the Silent Generation who chose not to be silent. While the defining characteristic of 1950s American youth was conformity with the cultural rules laid out by their parents, a boisterous minority chose to beat their own path. Over half a century later, we tend to only recall the fashion worn by this minority because it has come to represent the cool fashion of that generation. We see the leather and suede jackets, engineer boots, wide-fit denim, ID bracelets, and even a unique straw hat worn by The Kids. 

When Jim arrives at his new school and walks from the parking lot to the front entrance, we see how most teenagers dressed in 1955 contrasted against the few members of The Kids. Unlike later generations, high school students mostly adhered to the same fashion trends as adults in the 1950s. Athletes set themselves apart with letterman sweaters but most other men wore slacks, collared shirts, and blazers. Footwear consisted almost entirely of leather oxfords and loafers. You don’t even see the nonchalance of Ivy style that peaked a decade later, just conformity. In that way, The Kids and all the real-life teens they represented used fashion as an act of rebellion. 

It is worth noting that not a single black leather biker jacket is seen throughout the entire movie. At the time, this was still a new style of jacket almost exclusively worn by actual bikers. Marlon Brando brought the leather biker jacket into popular consciousness only two years earlier in the film The Wild One. In 1955, even rebellious teens were still wearing more accessible leather and suede jackets with a center zipper, either bomber or collared neck, and often an elastic cuff and waist. 

Engineer boots, however, were the footwear of choice for The Kids and their ilk. A great closeup of the entire group’s shoes occurs during the walk into the school scene. The camera starts at the shoes, accented with cuffed-up denim, before slowly panning up to reveal The Kids looking judgingly upon Jim. A single pair of black loafers can be spotted in the back of the group. Later in the film, Jim somehow has his own pair of biker boots, which doesn’t really make sense given all the other context. Someone in production probably decided that James Dean had to wear the coolest footwear of the time.

Lost Youth

Underpinning the sociological and psychological challenges faced by the Silent Generation was the generation’s unusually small size. Due to the financial hardship in the 1930s and total warfare in the early 1940s, people just stopped having kids at a normal rate. These kids were few and their youth was never given importance so as they hit young adulthood, a generational existential crisis was inevitable. Dean spells this struggle out to his naive parents during the opening scene in his famous, “You’re tearing me apart…” monologue. 

Jim is a loner whose parents have moved him from town to town his entire life. He doesn’t have any real friends but he has developed a skill for endearing himself to others, no doubt as a social survival mechanism. He is polite and helpful in his outgoingness. Jim’s personal style reflects an eagerness for acceptance by wearing an incredibly proper, inoffensive outfit for his first day of school. Yet, there are flashes of his true personality in the opening scene when he is drunk. An encounter with Buzz, the leader of The Kids, arouses Jim’s true personal style.

Despite his best efforts not to engage, Jim gets bullied into a knife fight with Buzz after a school field trip. Buzz lands a few cuts but is ultimately bested by the more agile Jim. In an attempt to fend off humility, Buzz then challenges Jim to a game of “chickie.” Jim accepts and heads home to prepare for the test of bravery. Once Jim arrives home, he is faced with his father in a demoralizing situation. This scene hammers home the point referenced earlier in the film that Jim never wants to be anything like his father. It is at this point that Jim discards his proper uniform and dawns the iconic red jacket, white t-shirt, and jeans. 

While Jim has no idea what “chickie” is, until his new friend Plato explains, he knows exactly who he is dealing with and what he must do. We can infer that Jim has been dealing with people like Buzz for most of his life. Jim cannot confront Buzz in his conformist cloak, he must dress as the rebel that he is. Of course, we learn later on in the film that the now iconic red jacket was chosen as a plot device. Jim’s father is meant to think that the police shot Jim, when in fact it was Plato wearing Jim’s jacket. The jacket had to stand out so Jim couldn’t wear the same leather or suede as The Kids. 

The Clothes Make the Man

Wardrobe is used simply but effectively as character development in Rebel Without A Cause. Jim is the only character who evolves throughout the film and we see that change displayed in his clothing. He goes from a boring conformist outfit to the iconic outfit that is synonymous with both the film and the actor. He never dresses quite like The Kids, but he also ultimately rejects the image of himself that society dictates for him. Jim finds his own lane both stylistically and sociologically. 

The Rebel’s Red Jacket

James Dean died in a car accident a month before Rebel Without A Cause was released. His role as Jim, the social outcast from an affluent family looking for his place in the world, came to represent the late actor’s public image more than anything else. Dean will always be the rebel in the red jacket in our collective imagination. It could be confused for a red Baracuta G9 jacket, but it is actually a pointed collar windbreaker with an elastic waist and snap tab cuffs from a company called Bud Berma. There were actually a few of the iconic red nylon windbreakers used in the film and one of them went up for auction in 2018. An AP video detailing the jacket provides an up-close look at details like the cuffs and inside tag, as well as an insider fact that a pleat had to be added to the waist because Dean was so slim that the jacket looked blousy on him.

Get the look from Rebel Without A Cause

Unfortunately, Bud Berma doesn’t exist anymore. However, London Fog makes a very affordable windbreaker that matches almost every detail of the jacket worn in the film.

Available on Amazon from $20.

Samurai Jeans SJ2PST-CREW Tubular White T-Shirt (2 Pack), available for $77 from Redcast Heritage.

Jelado 301xx Age of Longing Raw Selvedge Denim Jeans, available for $280 from Clutch Cafe.