The history of denim and how jeans were created.

In the final days of the California gold rush, the wife of a local miner faced a problem.

Her husband's denim work pants kept ripping, so their tailor, Jacob Davis, came up with the idea of ​​adding copper rivets to key stress points, like the corners of the pockets and the bottom of the button fly, to prevent them from ripping.

Davis's “riveted pants” soon became a huge hit and, unbeknownst to him at the time, marked the official birth of the blue jean, a garment that would transform fashion and come to represent the United States around the world.

“It's really democratized American fashion and it's also the biggest export we've ever sent to the world, because people identify jeans specifically with American Western culture,” said Shawn Grain Carter, a fashion professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. “It doesn't matter your economic or social class. It doesn't matter what your opinions are in terms of the political spectrum. Everybody wears denim.”

Today, denim is a major sales driver for retailers large and small, with the global denim market reaching $101 billion this year, up 28% from 2020, according to data from market research company Euromonitor International. The main clothing companies american eagle to Levi Strauss are in a race to corner that market, leaning on A-list celebrities like Sydney Sweeney and Beyonce to win over shoppers and boost sales in a shaky economy.

But if it weren't for Levi Strauss, founder of the eponymous jeans company, Davis's invention may not have gone much further than the railroad town where it was created in the early 1870s.

Shortly after Davis created his riveted pants, called “waist overalls” or “overalls” at the time, they began selling like “hot cakes” and he needed a business partner to obtain a patent, said Tracey Panek, Levi's in-house historian. So he wrote to Strauss, a Bavarian-born immigrant who ran a successful wholesale business in San Francisco and had provided Davis with the denim he used to create his riveted pants.

“The secret to the Pents is the Rivits I put in those Pockets and I find the demand is so great that I can't make up for them fast enough,” Davis wrote to Strauss in a letter, according to PBS.

Strauss, an “astute” businessman, recognized the opportunity and agreed to partner with Davis, Panek said.

“This would have been the first time Levi really” made its own products, Panek said. “He was no longer just importing and selling other people's products. He was making himself and selling to retailers.”

On May 20, 1873, the two men obtained a patent for riveted trousers and eventually opened a factory on Fremont Street, near the present-day Salesforce Tower in San Francisco's financial district.

They promised to offer workers the most durable jeans on the market and soon business was booming.

Through Strauss's connections as a wholesaler, the company's riveted overalls soon spread throughout the United States, becoming the garment of choice for workers around the world: miners, cowboys, farmers, any position that required durable clothing.

Jeans were reserved exclusively for work environments at the time, but as emerging denim manufacturers competed for a similar customer base, they sought to expand their assortment to boost sales.

“Slowly and steadily, as the 20th century progresses, you start to see some of these manufacturers making variations,” said Sonya Abrego, a fashion historian based in New York City. “There was a design called spring pants that were tighter, more formal, slightly flared, maybe what the factory foreman would wear, right? As opposed to just the guy on the shop floor.”

In 1934, Levi created the first line of women's jeans. Around this time, denim began to become more popular in non-work settings, primarily for activities like ranch vacations, camping, and horseback riding.

“So they were adopting a cowboy or a worker's outfit, but wearing it in a…tourist environment,” Abrego said.

Ranch vacations had become popular because there were finally roads connecting different parts of the country and few were willing to venture to Europe during a war. Companies like Levi began running ads highlighting their denim as “ranch wear” and “authentic Western riding wear” to capture shoppers looking for jeans to take with them on vacation, according to archival ads from the time.

These cultural moments helped expand denim beyond workers, but jeans did not become widespread as casual clothing until after World War II, when overall American fashion began to change.

As World War II ended, the powerful American consumer was beginning to emerge. For years, Americans had been forced to ration common goods such as rubber, sugar, and meat and at the same time had been encouraged to save their money by purchasing war bonds and saving excess money.

As the country moved from wartime to peacetime, Americans were willing to splurge and soon began spending heavily on new cars, appliances, and clothing.

“With a little more money to spend, you start to see more of a push for leisure clothing, fun clothing and play clothing, clothing to wear to backyard barbecues,” Abrego said. “Clothes that today we would consider casual style.”

Gradually, it became more and more acceptable for both men and women to wear jeans outside of work. Then, denim manufacturers made efforts to allow jeans in schools.

“They wanted to sell to as many people as possible,” Abrego said. “The idea that jeans are good for school means they're good for every day.”

By the time the 1960s arrived, denim manufacturers had expanded their products and were selling a wide variety of colors, fits, and styles. It became a symbol of the hippie movement and a pillar of Hollywood sets.

Soon, denim was everywhere, and the 1970s brought the iconic bell-bottoms and the first version of “designer jeans”: denim pants produced by labels and brands whose designs had nothing to do with workwear or Western wear, such as Calvin Klein and Gloria Vanderbilt.

Since then, denim has remained a constant in global fashion. While silhouettes, washes and fits have changed over time, jeans never go out of style, which is what makes them so durable, Abrego said.

“This is an 1873 design…do we see anything more 1873 on the street? It's a little wild if you think about it that way,” Abrego said. “We can talk about all the details, all the changes in manufacturing and all the different fits and finishes, but it's something recognizable, it's still a pair of jeans. To me, as a historian, that continuity is very compelling because I can't really name anything else that has stayed the same up to this point.”