So all you know-nothing dickheads and putzheads think those blue jeans you never want to get out of originated in Genoa, Italy.

Shows how little you schmucks know.

Blue jeans actually had their origins in India.

Genoa was only a way station on the jeans’ path to world-wide popularity.

According to An Uncommon History of Common Things, jeans has its origins in a thick cotton indigo-dyed cloth that 16th century sailors used to buy near the Dongarii Fort, near Bombay (now Mumbai).

Soon, the sailors returned home to Genoa with the cloth, where it was stitched into jeans and exported.

So, how then did the word jeans come into being?

What was initially bleu de Genes (Genoa blue) in Italian was eventually shortened to jeans.

But few today know that in the extraordinary story of jeans Mumbai came before Genoa.

Source:
An Uncommon History of Common Things, p.160-61