We know Sydney Sweeney has great jeans, but so do these Wayzata High School Seniors, who put the hours in making their Senior Homecoming jeans. At Friday’s Homecoming football game against Minnetonka, masses of girls in golden overalls covered the stands with school spirit. While this is a widely celebrated tradition in high schools, its roots are seemingly forgotten.
The trend of “Senior Jeans” began in 1904 at Purdue University, where seniors noticed yellow corduroy fabric in the window of a local tailor. With this fabric, the students decided to make pants, which they called “senior cords.” By the 1920s and 1930s, the seniors at Purdue held the annual senior cord parade every fall.
The senior cords gave students a canvas to decorate their clothes and showcase special things about themselves, such as extracurricular activities, fraternity and sorority symbols, school mascots, nicknames, catchphrases, and sometimes even the name of a significant other.
These pants were typically worn on major sports or event days, but only seniors could wear them. If any underclassmen were to break this unspoken rule and wear cords of their own, they would be swiftly and publicly de-pantsed, with their jeans hung in a public place to warn others.
While the trend of senior cords fizzled out in the 1970s, high school seniors began to resume the fashion in the early 2010s, and it has been a fun school tradition ever since. Now it is customary for high school seniors to make and design their own overalls to wear to the Homecoming football game.
The traditional golden fabric isn’t readily available for seniors nowadays, so instead people buy white overalls from Amazon and spray paint them with gold paint. “I’d say spray paint them early in the week and wait a couple days before you start decorating them,” says senior Natalie Smith, “Do the front one day and the back another day so everything has time to dry and none of it is messed up.”
Her friend, senior Addie Forbes, adds, “Don’t get metallic paint because it gets everywhere, and get the quick dry spray paint from Michael’s. Otherwise it takes forever.”
For decoration, seniors follow the traditional theme of personalizing the jeans to their own values and interests. “We looked on Pinterest for like an hour or two before we started working on the jeans,” explained senior Chloe Sergeant. “Then we all kind of looked at things we like to do, and modeled our jeans after that. I work at a flower shop, so I did flowers on the back of mine.” Typically, the jeans say “senior” and “2026”, of course in Wayzata colors, and with a “w” for Wayzata.
Beyond painting, it is popular to add accessories like lace and rhinestones for extra flair. “Don’t use glue guns, they don’t work,” Addie Forbes advises. “Start weeks in advance, don’t cram it, and use E-6000 glue for any add ons.”
Sticking gems and lace on jeans for hours is tedious at the least, and many recommend to start as soon as possible. “Start earlier and plan it out before you actually meet with people,” Chloe says. “It took us about 9 hours I think. We met up on Sunday and did 7 hours together, and then I was working on them throughout the week.”
Kyra Volk, a senior who designed the jeans with Chloe, says, “These took 12 hours to make. You should definitely start as soon as possible. A few weeks out is good. Don’t wait till the last weekend like I did.”
While this trend of making jeans is a long process, it is an exciting way for seniors to get together and spread school spirit during their last homecoming weekend.
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Source: https://www.indystar.com/story/news/history/retroindy/2024/09/24/decorated-corduroy-pants-served-as-canvas-for-high-school-seniors/75205387007/
