For most college students, Feb. 26, 1829, is an important date, but most of them couldn’t tell you why.
It’s the birthday of Levi Strauss, father of the blue jeans. His legacy of jean-dom lives on in the hearts— and on the legs — of millions of people.
Levi Strauss moved from his New York home to San Francisco in 1853 to start a wholesale business. But Levi’s next big idea came in a letter from Jacob Davis, who suggested using metal rivets to hold the pockets and jeans together so they wouldn’t tear.
In 1886, Strauss sewed a leather label on their jeans. The label pictured a pair of Levi’s jeans being pulled between two horses to show the pants’ durability.
Instead of being called “overalls” as they had in years past, the teenage boys and their older brothers dubbed the product “jeans.” Some think that the term was adopted by the boys because of the fabric that was used in the pants. The people who wore the work pants made from denim or jean fabrics coined the name “jean pants.” The company adopted the name in the 1960s.
In 1964, a writer for American Fabrics said, “Throughout the industrialized world, denim has become a symbol of the young, active, informal, American way of life. It is equally symbolic of America’s achievements in mass production.”
Levi Strauss & Co. began selling its products nationally for the first time in the 1950s. The world has never been the same.
Lauren Todd, a 19-year-old freshman, was willing to hypothesize about the jeans’ popularity.
“Jeans are still in style because you can dress them up or down and you can match them with anything,”
According to Gene Rosetti, co-owner of Flashback, a vintage clothing and furniture store on Central and Cooper, Levi’s are so popular because of the rebel image associated with jeans.
That image is owed largely to actors like Marlon Brando (“A Streetcar Named Desire”) and James Dean (“Rebel Without a Cause”).
“It’s a status symbol and image,” Rossseti said. “(Brando) looked tough in that rockabilly image with the cuffs on his jeans rolled up.”
Rossetti said the long-running popularity of Levi’s helped spawn an off-shoot business — the buying and selling of vintage jeans.
Levi’s are considered “vintage” if they were produced prior to 1971. They can be distinguished from later versions by the leather tag that still appears on the back right pocket of every pair of Levi’s. Vintage Levi’s tags have a capital E, while later versions appear with a lowercase.
Rossetti said Japan and Europe are major markets in the vintage jeans business, and he said people pay up to $1,000 for mint condition vintage Levi’s.
Net sales for Levi Strauss & Co. reached nearly $5 billion in 2000.
