Last year may Jeans celebrated their 137th anniversary. They have become so firmly established in the lives of the millions of people on our planet that I don’t think anyone of us today is able to imagine his or her life without jeans. The major advantage of this practical garment is that it suits people of any figure - fat, slim, tall or short alike. But the most important aspect is that you feel so comfortable in jeans as if they have been made especially for you! I have not yet heard anyone complaining about jeans.
And this is how everything started. In 1847 18-year old Loeb Strauss (1829-1902), the son of a Bavarian Jewish merchant, left Germany to join his brothers in the United States who ran a fabric store in New-York. In one year he came to master this business very well and changed his first name to Levi. He then opened a store in Kentucky. In the course of 20 years he expanded his business and traded in almost the entire western part of the United States. Shortly, Levi Strauss earned the reputation of a respectable businessman and a man of charity. (1848, gold was discovered in California and the so-called “gold rush” began, which lasted for several decades. Levi managed to pinpoint the location of his business, because thousands of gold diggers needed durable fabric for their tents, clothes and other needs).
One of Levi’s clients was Jacob Davis, a tailor and an immigrant from Latvia, who lived in Nevada and regularly bought fabric from Levi’s company. One of Jacob’s customers kept nagging all the time that the pockets on his trousers got torn very quickly. The tailor got so tired with his pestering that Davis decided to secure the pockets with iron rivets. And all of a sudden, these trousers appealed to everyone and to miners in particular. (This happened in 1872). The riveted trousers turned out to be so popular that Jacobs made up his mind to have this idea patented. But he could not afford it because he did not have 68 dollars to pay for the registration of the documents. He urgently sent a letter to Levi Strauss. The latter being a far-sighted businessman, immediately realized that he had hit upon a goldmine.
On 20 May, 1873, they obtained Patent N 139 121. This very day is considered to be the birthday of jeans and from this date begins their triumphal procession across the world.
For Strauss it was becoming more and more difficult to cope with the orders. So he wrote to his brothers in New York to send him more fabric and they promptly provided him with a French cotton fabric called Serge de Nimes, which was the name of the city where the fabric was manufactured. The Californians immediately shortened the name to “denim” and baptized the new trousers as such but Strauss himself used to call his own product “waist overalls”. He also used another fabric called Genes to make his new trousers. This French word originates from the name of the city Genoa, but in America the word turned into simply “jeans”. This is the name under which Levis’ production won fame later. From 1880 onwards Strauss bought fabric for his jeans in the United States, in New Hampshire.
From the outset Levi’s were made of a brown color fabric, but Strauss realized that the blue-colored trousers would sell better and this concept has proved to be correct. The first jeans had only one pocket at the back (two pockets were sewn by 1900), another pocket for a watch and buttons. From 1886 a leather label was sewn to the outer part of the trousers. Two horses moving in opposite directions trying to tear the jeans were depicted on it (A Gurian rider also makes note of the durability of the jeans in his diary, which we have found in the United States): “… I worked in the Levi store for a short while … The man is too rich … He sews such firm pants that you won’t be able to tear them even if you make the greatest effort to do so. And they are also very good to wear …” (This note was made in the 1890s). It was around 1890 that Levi’s jeans were assigned an official number – 501. A small red label on the right back pocket with an inscription “Levi’s” indicates that the traditional jeans 501 have buttons. If the label is orange, then the trousers have a zip instead. In those years the price of the jeans was one dollar and forty-five cents. Not very long ago jeans of the 1880 make have been found in one of the mines in the US, which were later sold for 30,000 US dollars at an auction. Encouraged by Levi’s success, other firms such as Wrangler and Lee began to make jeans and they, too, managed to gain success. For years jeans were deemed to be the clothes only of the western US states and were associated with cattleman, cowboys and workers. Since the 1930s, along with the rising popularity of western movies, jeans have become the symbol of freedom and individuality among the general public. This idea was strengthened by such movie idols as John Wayne, Gary Cooper, and Randolph Scott and in the fifties and sixties jeans “were advertised” by Marlon Brando, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Paul Newman and Steve McQueen. During the shooting of some movies, Steve McQueen used to order a multitude of Levi’s jeans. The producers kept grumbling, unable to understand what the actor needed so many pairs of jeans for, when his movie hero was not wearing them at all. It was only later that they found out that McQueen used to send these jeans to the Chino home for difficult adolescents where he himself had spent several years. The result was that in the Eastern US jeans have become the favorite garment of the representatives of various social strata, including women. I have made a note of women in particular, because the appearance of a representative of the fair sex dressed in trousers still had a scandalizing effect on society at that time. When Marlene Dietrich and Catherine Hepburn first appeared in this male attire, many people were shocked.
Very soon, however, jeans became the most widespread among clothes. During the Second World War jeans were produced in small numbers. This was the time they were introduced to the world by American soldiers, who used to wear them as casual clothes after their official military service hours.
In the forthcoming years, jeans were worn everywhere and by everybody, except the clergy. There were some places, however, where jeans were “persecuted” (at schools, for instance). It is a notorious fact that in 1951 the famous singer and actor, Bing Crosby, refused to take a room in one of the most fashionable Canadian hotels as a protest against the hotel rules, which refused to accommodate people wearing jeans. The sixties cleared everything up. Together with rock music, jeans gained a strong foothold establishing themselves forever in the lives of Americans; and not in their lives only (by the way, it is known that more than 70 songs include the word “jeans”. It would suffice to recall The Animals ’hit “the house of the Rising Sun” with the following words: “My mother was a tailor; she sewed my new blue jeans.” A British group, “The Swinging Blue Jeans”, named themselves in honour of this garment. Once a funny thing happened to them. The group members always appeared in public dressed in blue jeans and jackets. Once when strolling in the street, they were arrested by the police, because they were taken for prisoners that had escaped from a local jail. (The prison uniform is blue jeans, as you may know). Another example is “Sticky Fingers” the Rolling Stones album with Levi’s jeans featuring on the cover. The design belongs to Andy Warhol …). Many people still remember very well that in the Soviet Union and the Socialist bloc countries, everything that was western (and jeans were one such thing) was considered an indicator of western society’s decadence. That is why these clothes were practically unavailable on market. Levi’s archives have kept letters received from these countries, in which the authors request the company to send them jeans.
Jeans have become the uniform of the Woodstock generation when a plethora of their variety appeared on the market – painted, covered with drawings, appliqués and adorned by pictures. Jeans have turned into a certain expression of a rebellious spirit and a youth banner. The art of drawing on jeans gained so much popularity that in 1973 Levi’s announced a contest for the best jeans covered with drawings asking everyone to send a photo of their artistic work. Two thousand photos were received in total. Some of the specimens that won in the contest were bought by Levi’s for their own archive and were exhibited in different museums and art galleries in the US over the course of 18 months.
In the eighties, famous designers began to put their own jeans on the market having at last acquainted the haute couture with the trousers of cowboys and workers. This was a success that Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis could not even dream of …
