[  Previous  ||  Index  ||  Next ]

Function of Fashion

The rough-and-ready forty-niners of Old California would have mined for gold naked if they had to. But Levi Strauss wasn't about to let them. In 1850, the twenty-year-old German immigrant followed the Gold Rush to California with the idea of making a bundle selling tent fabric to miners. He soon realized that the miners didn't need tents, but stronger trousers, according to Iain Finlayson's "Denim: An American Legend."

Levi Strauss created his first pair of pants from a blue, canvas-like material that took its name from "de Nimes,"-Nimes being the region in France where the blue was found. The term "jeans" came from an American corruption of the French pronunciation of 'Genoese.' The stiff blue canvas pants reminded French miners of the baggies worn by Genoese sailors, writes Sharon Rosenberg in "The Denim Book."

In 1853, according to a Levi press kit, Strauss started Levi Strauss & Co. in a small wooden shack in San Francisco. The first trouser design was nothing fancy, in fact, they were meant to be durable, practical and protective. They were anything but fashionable.

Jacob Davis came along in 1873 and suggested to Strauss that he add copper rivets to the design stronger. According to denim lore, Strauss decided to put a rivet at the base of the fly until, "a customer stood to close to a camp fire and suffered from a overheated rivet", according to "The Irreverent Guide to Corporate America," by Milton Moskowitz, Michael Katz and Robert Levering. During the same year Strauss introduced the trademark stitched double arc design on the back pockets to resemble the wing's of an American eagle according to Finlayson.

The "501 Double X" pattern, Levi's flagship design, was born soon after; Double X referring to the heavyweight denim and 501 being the lot number, writes Moskowitz, Katz and Levering.

Denim began its ascent from a workman's fabric into an American icon in the 1950s, according to Moskowitz, Katz and Levering. Judging by sales figures of the period, Levi was none to shy about cashing in on the denim mystique: In 1950 sales were $12 million; by the end of the decade sales were pushing $50 million.

America was going through one of its defining transitions, and it was only fitting that jeans came to symbolize the era. Finlayson writes the material "was the natural fabric for a new, classless, transatlantic culture based on youth and aggression. Jeans and rock 'n' roll were American, and were appropriated by 1950s kids as symbols and vehicles of liberation from the stale, sedate culture of their parents."

By the time the '60s rolled around jeans were already established as the casual wear for teenagers. To teens jeans were "real," uncompromising, classless and anonymous. Everyone was wearing jeans, they were cool, they were hip, they were the thing to wear. Levi's 501's were considered the uniform of social change. The '70s brought about all sorts of change and experimentation with the basic denim style, writes Finlayson, but over time the basic design of the 501 has gone unchanged.

There have been a few experimental 501 designs, none of which lasted long. Some of them are worth thousands of dollars to collectors. A pair of circa 1928 Levi's with an exposed back pocket and suspender buttons can fetch $8,000.

According to a recent article in the San Francisco Examiner, Levi earnings soared 129 percent, to $734.7 million in the year through November 1995, from $321 million. From miner's pants to American icon; from a wooden shack to multimillion dollar corporation-If Levi Strauss were alive today he would be amazed.

[ Prism Online April 1996 Article Index ]

[ Top of document ]