May 20, 1873: Creation of THE Original, Authentic Jean

Here is a brief history of Levi’s and the pants that we now know as jeans …

Levi Strauss first arrives in San Francisco in 1853 and opens a wholesale dry goods business. In 1873, Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis, a local clothing tailor, invents and patents men’s pants intended as workwear. Their first creation, dubbed “waist overalls” featured one back pocket with the Arcuate (Levi’s “arc”) stitching design, a watch pocket, a cinch, suspender buttons, and rivets. The cinch and suspender buttons were standard on men’s pants at the time. The rivets were Davis’ idea to reinforce torn pants. His contribution was to place copper rivets to reinforce the points of strain on pants, like pocket corners and at the base of the button fly. And that was the invention of denim jeans on May 20, 1873. They are known worldwide as the most successful, widely recognized, and imitated clothing products in the history of apparel…

levis501

What we have today are Levi’s quintessential classic, which is the famous 501, a modern version of the “overalls” made in 1873. Many things have changed from the 1873 version, yet many things have remained the same throughout all these years. The Levi’s 501 Original Shrink-to-Fit Jeans are are made to shrink about 10%, so size accordingly. These are straight leg, original fit jeans. Because they are made from a raw rigid dark denim, you can keep them this way by washing as little as possible, or you can wash them often to lighten and fade them.

Check out Next’s huge selection of Levi’s denim including their most popular 501 STF denim!

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