Much like Coca-Cola and McDonald’s, no brand has stood for freedom, democracy and the American way quite like Levi’s. Sure, now you have pricey designer brands, but what non-celebrity can afford to buy them, and who’s to say they’ll still be hip next year? (Remember Daryl K. or Earl Jeans? Didn’t think so.) Aside from being made of denim, jeans today don’t have much in common with Levi’s and what it stood for.
A coffee-table book titled This is a Pair of Levi’s Jeans, published by the company itself, chronicles the fascinating history of how a humble garment worn out of necessity over 100 years ago has achieved iconic status in people’s lives.
Levi Strauss was a German born in Buttenheim, Bavaria, in 1829. The son of a peddler, he emigrated to the United States as a teen and at 24, started selling dry goods like bedding wholesale in San Francisco. During the California Gold Rush, Strauss saw that miners needed sturdy work clothes and cannily decided to fill that need. In 1853, Levi Strauss & Co. was born. Soon, word of mouth spread about the firm’s durable "waist overalls" (as jeans were called back then) and even cowboys and ranch hands adopted them in the West.
Strong though these denims were, miners and cowpunchers could carry only so many picks and tools before their pockets started tearing. To address the problem, in 1873 Levi’s partnered with tailor Jacob Davis, who had invented metal rivets to hold together ripping pants pockets. Since then, riveted pockets have revolutionized the clothing industry. Plus, they still look cool.
Proud of their product’s durability, in 1886 Levi’s started sewing a leather patch on the back to convey the incredible strength of their jeans. The patch showed two horses trying to pull apart a pair of waist overalls, and the company had such confidence in their product that they guaranteed "a new pair free – if they rip." One Levi’s salesman couldn’t resist the dare and tested their claim with two mules. While they did manage to rip apart a pair of Levi’s, the man later admitted the test wasn’t exactly fair as mules were stronger than horses, and one of the mules promptly expired after the strain of its task.
Vogue magazine, already a style authority in the ‘30s, was the first major publication to call blue jeans fashionable. In 1935, it introduced Levi’s to Easterners who’d never been out West.
By the next year, jeans had become so popular that Levi’s had competitors putting out their own riveted clothing. To differentiate their jeans from the rest, a Levi’s sales manager devised a little red tab to be sewn on the back pocket, with "LEVI’S" stitched in white. Hence, Red Tab jeans.
The company paid close attention to feedback from its customers, whether good or bad. As effective as the back-pocket rivets were, customers started complaining about them, saying they damaged furniture, car seats and saddles. By 1937, they had convinced the company, and Levi’s introduced a new innovation: Concealed copper rivets, which had the same guarantee of strength but would inflict none of the harm.
Levi’s also assigned lot numbers to different kinds of jeans, and 501 was given to their top-of-the-line, linen-sewn, copper-riveted, nine-ounce denim "waist overalls" which, until 1960, was Levi’s term for what teenagers were calling "jeans" in the late ‘50s. Interesting factoid: "Jeans" was derived from the Italian word genes, the style of pants worn by sailors from the Italian port of Genoa.
During World War II, pants were so hard to come by that one client hospitalized with a broken leg refused to have his Levi’s cut off his swollen limb. He said he’d rather endure the pain of having them pulled off than go to the trouble of finding another pair.
Hollywood developed its own fixation on the Levi’s brand. In fact, the company sent a stack of gold-threaded Western shirts to heartthrob Cary Grant, a Hollywood icon of impeccable male taste and style. Caught in a timid fashion moment, Grant typed back a letter saying, "The shirts are, for a conservative such as myself, rather, rather… if you dig me… and I’m not at all sure if I can swagger out in gold-threaded finery.
"…Let me know if Levi Strauss ever evolve a line of absolutely plain un-checked, un-metal-threaded, absolutely solid-colored shirts… no matter what the colors: I will rush to the nearest shop."
Fifties films like The Wild One starring Marlon Brando also sparked a denim craze. Through Brando and later James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause and Giant, cuffed jeans acquired biker coolness and a certain rebellious cachet, perfect for teens at the time. Marilyn Monroe, definitely a sex symbol ahead of her time, is shown in the book lifting weights clad only in a bikini top and a pair of Levi’s. Other jeans-wearing icons like Clark Gable, Steve McQueen and Elvis cemented Levi’s’ place in fashion history, while in the ‘60s, Bob Dylan and Andy Warhol’s Factory made jeans part of the countercultural look. Pop psychedelia à la Yellow Submarine inspired a series of Levi’s TV ads showing animated jeans being surreally herded and rounded up by cowboys. A new slogan emerged to capture Levi’s durable branding appeal: "Fashions may change, but quality never goes out of style."
With over 100 years of stitching and pitching, the Levi’s name has become an icon as readily identifiable as the stars who wear them – including those who starred in Levi’s commercials early in their career, like Bruce Willis, Arsenio Hall, John Goodman and Brad Pitt (who could forget his turn as the sexy cowboy in jeans in Thelma and Louise?)
Jeans may come and go, but only a few brands become living legends. Levi’s continues to market itself as a symbol of youth, freedom and America. In the process, they helped make blue jeans society’s great equalizer – something available to everyday folk as well as the rich and famous. In jeans, Levi’s image suggests, you are not playing some role society expects of you; you are simply being yourself.