Blue Jeans
The denim pants that began as a working garment in the 1849 San Francisco Gold Rush and evolved in the 1980s to a designer status item were invented by peddler Levi Strauss (1829-1902). Strauss was only seventeen years old when he left his native Bavaria, Germany, speaking little English. He became a peddler of housewares in and around New York, New York, but found much competition. Strauss heard of the boom in San Francisco and in 1850 boarded a clipper ship with his wares.
By the time he reached his destination, he had sold everything except a great amount of brown canvas, which he assumed miners would buy to make tents and wagon covers. Strauss soon discovered that his customers desired comfortable but rugged pants that could survive the rigors of mining. Strauss contracted with a local tailor to make his "waist high overalls." He soon began making them of a cotton fabric called "serge de Nimes, " a French word that was Americanized to denim.
The next improvement to his pants actually came from tailor Jacob Davis in Carson City, Nevada. Strauss had been manufacturing Davis's design of canvas pants that featured rivets at stress points to strengthen the pants. Davis and Strauss applied for and received the patent on their riveted pants, and Davis began overseeing manufacturing of the product in San Francisco. Davis began cutting the fabric himself and delivering it to seamstresses, who sewed the garments that were picked up by Davis in the evening. Eventually this method, called the "putting out" system, was replaced by mass production in a factory.
Sweet-Orr, a New York-based producer of the canvas pants, was founded in 1871 and exhibited its product at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The design boasted extra room in the seat, and Sweet-Orr claimed they were the most comfortable work pants. But the company's most important contribution was to standardize basic sizes for jeans, since ready-to-wear clothing became the norm as a result of the Civil War demand for off-the-rack speed and convenience. Up to that point, most other garments had been produced on a custom basis.
Lee, a Kansas-based company, entered the denim pants market in 1886. Like other jeans companies, Lee stressed its product's durability, claiming that its pants were "tough as mule skin." Sweet-Orr advertised that their pants could withstand a tug-o-war. The garment was soon worn by railroad workers, cowboys, and any other worker who needed durable pants. In 1926 Lee replaced the button fly with a zipper, and Levi's did the same in 1955.
By the 1930s the pants came to be called "jeans." Although the origin of the name is unclear, it might be from the French Revolutionaries called "Jeans" (pronounced "johns") of the late 1700s who wore a heavy cotton fabric, or from the city of Genoa, Italy, where such fabric was made. At any rate, the 1930s saw the transformation of jeans from strictly work clothes to the realm of fashion. Jeans were touted as the perfect garment on dude ranches and at rodeos. During World War II, jeans again became work clothes. In fact, the country was encouraged to wear old jeans so defense workers would have them to wear in the factories. The suspender buttons and back cinch were eliminated, too, as the government saw these as a waste of valuable wartime materials.
In the 1950s jeans remained a work garment, but by the 1960s jeans became both a fashion item (in a faded, torn, and worn version) and a symbol of the working class. Jeans began to enter the designer phase during the late 1970s. The influence of the movie Urban Cowboy sent American sales alone skyrocketing to 600 million pairs in the peak year of 1981. Blue jeans became an expensive status symbol, and such trade names as "Guess," "Jordache," "Sassoon," and "Calvin" were sought after by fashion-conscious consumers. Pre-washed, acid-washed, stone-washed, pre-worn, and pre-ripped became part of the clothing vocabulary. Basic jeans made a comeback in 1985, and throughout the 1990s, the trend was still popular.
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