Why North Korea censored Alan Titchmarsh's jeans - and why dictators fear them ... trends now
It was as a young journalist working in Cuba in 1989 that I was first astonished by the raw power of an everyday item of clothing: a humble pair of blue jeans.
I'd been sent as a budding expert on Communist countries to uncover the whereabouts of an AIDS detention camp, where those with HIV were imprisoned to prevent the spread of the virus.
The mood was grim; few wanted to help a Western journalist nosing around Havana on a sensitive story and my visa was fast running out. My translator and 'fixer' Jose had so far yielded nothing — until a night spent drinking cocktails together revealed his unlikely fascination with jeans. Levi's jeans, to be precise.
Like most ordinary Cubans, the 'dollar stores' which sold Western goods were off limits and a tough embargo on U.S. goods meant denim was in short supply. He suggested I buy them for him — though under cover of darkness as it would be considered 'profiteering' and he'd face fines, even prison, if anyone found out.
After practising the route during the day, eating ice creams to appear 'natural', I bought the expensive jeans for $50 (equivalent of £100 today), heart pounding, and left them under a particular bush just after 11pm.
Alan Titchmarsh's dark-blue 'dad jeans' were blurred out by North Korean censors on state TV
Titchmarsh's BBC series Garden Secrets has apparently been judged wholesome enough to become a fixture on state TV since 2022. Banned as a symbol of U.S. imperialism since the early 1990s, his jeans, however, have not made the cut
Jose collected them when I was out of sight. In return, he put me in touch with a man who dropped me outside the secret detention centre to chase my story.
Such was the demand for these casual trousers that Jose was prepared to risk everything to lay his hands on a pair. And he certainly wasn't the only one.
As counterintuitive as it might sound to us now, jeans held a subversive allure in some parts of the world in the 1970s and 80s. Banned from Soviet-occupied East Germany, a pair of Levi's became a potent symbol of Western freedom and youth culture. When the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989, marking an end to the Cold War, hundreds of youths arrived dressed in none other than blue jeans.
I was reminded of this when I read about how Alan Titchmarsh's dark-blue 'dad jeans' have been blurred out by North Korean censors on state TV.
Titchmarsh's BBC series Garden Secrets has apparently been judged wholesome enough to become a fixture on state TV since 2022. Banned as a symbol of U.S. imperialism since the early 1990s, his jeans, however, have not made the cut.
The story has been a source of amusement for many, but it took me back. I first encountered the unexpected currency of this fashion item while living in East Germany in the mid-1980s. As part of my German degree at Oxford, I managed to get a study visa to attend Humboldt University in East Berlin.
Three years before the Berlin Wall fell, it was a period of hope in the satellite states — fuelled by the arrival of Mikhail Gorbachev's reformist politics in Moscow — but also growing disillusionment with the draconian travel restrictions of life behind the Wall.
Jeans were considered a token of capitalism and as such jean-wearers were enemies of the state. To protect youths from outside dress influences, a socialist clothing culture had been set up.
But international fashion could not be stopped at the Iron Curtain.
