Today is the 150th anniversary of jeans. It was on this day in 1873 that Levi Strauss patented an idea suggested to him by one of the customers of his fabric business, Jacob Davis. It was Jacob who had the idea of riveting vulnerable areas of workpants; he suggested going into business with Levi to produce this new product, and 150 years later, here we all are.
I’ve been lucky to work with Levi’s quite a few times over the last 20 years, in particular curating the historical section of their last anniversary celebration, in 2001. There was an exhibition at Berlin’s Postbahnhof, where Stacia Fink brought over a selection of original Levi’s artefacts. Here’s a selection of pictures, plus details of some of the earliest pants in Levi’s collection.
For true jeans geeks, over on my loomstate blog, here’s a story on the fabric which those very first jeans were made of, cotton duck.