You’re probably wearing the subject of today’s article right now. Jeans are so ordinary that we never stop to ask where they came from, and I’ll admit I assumed the story was simple: Levi Strauss, gold rush, done. Then I pulled the thread, and the whole thing unraveled. The actual inventor couldn’t afford the paperwork, the word “denim” is French, that mysterious tiny pocket has a specific job, and a rivet placed in exactly the wrong spot caused a problem you’ll wince at. Here are five true things about denim that made me look at my own pants with new respect.
Did you know Levi Strauss didn’t actually invent blue jeans?
The riveted blue jean was invented by a tailor you’ve never heard of: Jacob Davis, a Latvian immigrant working in Reno, Nevada. In the early 1870s, a customer kept ripping through her husband’s work pants, so Davis reinforced the stress points with copper rivets, the same trick used on horse blankets. The pants were suddenly indestructible, and orders poured in. Davis wanted a patent but couldn’t scrape together the roughly $68 filing fee, so he wrote to his fabric supplier in San Francisco, a dry goods merchant named Levi Strauss, and offered to split the invention in exchange for covering the paperwork. Strauss said yes, and on May 20, 1873, U.S. Patent 139,121 made them partners. Levi got the immortality. Jacob got a factory job running production. History can be brutal like that.
Did you know “denim” and “jeans” are both named after European cities?
Two of the most American-sounding words in the language are imports. “Denim” comes from serge de Nîmes, a sturdy twill fabric woven in the French city of Nîmes; English speakers wore the phrase down until only “de Nîmes” survived. “Jeans” comes from Genoa, Italy, whose sailors wore pants cut from a similar cotton cloth; the French called the city Gênes, and the name stuck to the trousers. So when an American cowboy pulled on his jeans, he was technically wearing French fabric named after an Italian port. The most patriotic garment in the closet is a European collaboration, which is exactly the kind of secret a good pair of jeans would keep.
Did you know the tiny pocket inside your front pocket has an official purpose?
That little pocket-within-a-pocket isn’t decoration, and it isn’t for coins, guitar picks, or the lip balm you lost in the wash. It’s a watch pocket. In the 1870s, working men carried pocket watches on chains, and a watch bouncing loose in a main pocket was a cracked crystal waiting to happen. So Levi’s built a snug, reinforced pouch sized exactly for a pocket watch, and it’s been on every pair since the very first ones. The wristwatch made it obsolete about a century ago, and the smartphone finished the job, but the watch pocket refuses to leave. It may be the only feature on your body right now that was designed for a technology two upgrades extinct.
Did you know a campfire is the reason your jeans don’t have a crotch rivet?
Original Levi’s had a copper rivet at every stress point, including one at the base of the fly, right where the seams meet. Copper, you may recall, conducts heat magnificently. For decades, cowboys and miners who crouched too close to a campfire discovered this the hard way, and their complaints went politely ignored. Then, as company lore tells it, Levi’s own president, Walter Haas Sr., went camping in his 501s, squatted by the fire a little too long, and personally experienced the phenomenon the customers had been describing. The offending rivet was gone by 1941. It’s a beautiful case study in customer service: sometimes feedback only works when it happens to the CEO.
Did you know Bing Crosby owned a custom denim tuxedo?
In 1951, Bing Crosby, one of the most famous entertainers alive, tried to check into a hotel in Vancouver and was nearly turned away because he was wearing denim, which the hotel considered too low-class for its lobby. A desk clerk eventually recognized him and relented, but the story made the papers. Levi’s response was magnificent: the company tailored Crosby a custom tuxedo jacket made entirely of denim, complete with a label inside declaring the wearer properly dressed and welcome in any fine establishment. Crosby wore it in public, photographers loved it, and the stunt helped launch denim’s long climb from workwear to high fashion. Next time someone calls your jeans-on-jeans outfit a “Canadian tuxedo,” inform them it has celebrity provenance.
Send this to the person who lives in their favorite pair of jeans… they’ll never look at that tiny pocket the same way again.
