WWWest-Online Development Blog

When you search for information you might find out information that you didn’t know. That’s one of the parts that I love . One of my tasks was to research and learn about clothing in the wild west. I looked for anything that could help me, like photos and descriptions.

One of the things that I researched was jeans. I already knew that mine workers and later also cowboys used to wear jeans, on account of them being made from rough material that didn’t rip easily. What I didn’t know about jeans is that in the beginning the jeans were made from tent fabric and were green in color. They became blue after it became apparent that any stains on the green fabric were painfully visible.

In the course of my research I also found a little information about jeans before Levi Strauss took to making them. What I learned was that in the 16th century in India there was a fabric similar to jeans, which was used in the making of clothes for sailors. And later, in the 17th century a similar fabric was also used in Italy.

To learn a little more about Levi Strauss jeans I visited the website of Levi Strauss Co. The company was established in 1853 by Levi Strauss, a Bavarian immigrant who came to USA in 1847 and stayed in New York. In 1853 Levi became an American citizen, left New York and moved to San Francisco. He opened a small dry-goods store called (surprise, surprise…) “Levi Strauss Co.” ,which grew and flourished into a successful business. In 1873 Jacob Davis, a tailor, joined Levi Strauss, and together they developed a patent to make the pants stronger so that they wouldn’t rip easily. The patent was to put metal rivets to help deal with the strain at the seams. The pants were called waist overalls or just overalls, which was the traditional name for men’s workwear in those days. The first pants were the original 501 jeans, though they weren’t yet known by that name; they were simply called “XX”. In 1890 the patent became public domain so Levi Strauss Co. was no longer the exclusive manufacturer. Jeans became a universal pruduct .

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