If you had to pick one piece of clothing that is the most famous worldwide, you would probably choose a pair of jeans. The name itself comes from Gênes, the French word for Genoa, Italy, where a sturdy cotton cloth was once woven for sailors’ trousers. But despite “jean” being a fabric type, most modern jeans are actually made from denim. Their revolution began in the late 19th century as a way to provide better clothing for miners.
In the early 1870s, Jacob Davis was a busy tailor in Reno, Nevada, working mostly for the miners of the region. The trousers of the time were already made from denim, a tough fabric, but they kept breaking at weak points like pocket corners and fly seams. His solution was simple but revolutionary: reinforce those stress points with small copper rivets, the kind used on horse harnesses.
The pants lasted, and word spread quickly. Davis wanted to protect his idea but didn’t have the money for a patent. He turned to his fabric supplier: Levi Strauss, a San Francisco merchant already known for selling sturdy, indigo-dyed denim. Strauss saw the potential, and on May 20, 1873, the two men received a patent that protected riveted jeans under Levi’s name until 1890, cementing its reputation as the jeans brand.
Jeans remained primarily utilitarian during the early 20th century, worn mostly by laborers and even banned in some schools for their rugged image. But in the 1950s, Hollywood brought them into the spotlight, helped by icons like James Dean and Marlon Brando, making them popular with the youth. From there, they slipped seamlessly from workwear to everyday fashion.
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