What does “vieze spijkerbroek” mean in Dutch fashion?
Waarom vieze spijkerbroeken ineens een modetrend zijn
B1 Dutch listening practice · Flemish Dutch · Picked for people who know some
Spijkerbroek is the Dutch everyday word for jeans, literally “nail-trousers,” after the rivets Levi Strauss patented in the 1870s. Almost every other European language took jeans straight from English; Dutch (and its cousin Afrikaans) coined its own. So when influencer Femke Louise’s pre-stained pair went viral, Dutch press called it a vieze spijkerbroek, “a dirty pair of jeans.”
The clip is a vox-pop on the dirty denim trend, with passers-by half-laughing at the idea of paying €1000 for jeans that look like you rolled in mud. Note the calque: English dirty denim sounds aspirational; literal Dutch vieze spijkerbroek sounds slightly judgmental, which is exactly the joke.
How common are the words?
How common are the words in this B1 Dutch listening practice video?
How common in written Dutch
How common in spoken Dutch
Harder words in this video
These words are harder than B1. Here is what they mean.
Source: wordfreq 3.1.1 (general) · SUBTLEX-NL 2014 (spoken). These numbers are close, not perfect.
- ▸In LINDA., Glamour Nederland and Cosmopolitan NL trend pieces on dirty denim
- ▸In Het Parool and AD lifestyle reporting on Dutch influencers, alongside accounts like Anna Nooshin
- ▸In Beeld en Geluid coverage of how spijkerbroek entered Dutch in the 1950s
- ▸In De Wereld Draait Door archive clips and 3voor12 features on Dutch youth-fashion cycles