By Adedotun Adebiyi
Chances are you’ve worn a pair of jorts in your life. Maybe you took a pair of shears to old Levi’s or bought them new. But it’s an inescapable fact that during the warmer months, jean shorts are everywhere. Originally called waist overalls, jeans didn’t become popular until the Gold Rush (with a name like that, it’s hard to imagine why!), when the demand for sturdy workwear skyrocketed. Still, its spawn, jean shorts—today known by their portmanteau “jorts”—were not a part of the sartorial lexicon until just over 50 years ago.The counterculture movement in the 1960s brought about the rise of jean shorts. Prior to this, wearing shorts in public was considered a grave impropriety, with some cities going so far as to ban them outright. By the late ’60s, aided by a free-love, anti-authority mentality, folks began hacking the legs off their jeans to create shorts.