FT MAGAZINE In December 1870, a woman entered Jacob Davis’s tailoring shop in Reno, Nevada with a request for the strongest possible pair of trousers for her hefty husband. Davis accepted the challenge, and constructed the trousers from cotton duck, a heavy tent material. On completion, he remembered some copper rivets he’d used to affix straps to horse blankets, and realised they would be perfect for reinforcing the points of stress on the pockets and crotch of the trousers.
The “riveted pants” immediately proved popular; within two years he had made hundreds of pairs, and they were being copied by other tailors. To protect his idea, he needed a patent, which he could not afford alone. He approached his cloth supplier, Levi Strauss, suggesting they form a partnership. Strauss was a wholesaler of “dry goods” who had moved from New York to San Francisco in 1853 to capitalise on the California Gold Rush. He recognised a good idea when he saw one.
On May 20 1873, the patent was granted and the two men started manufacturing riveted “waist overalls” from cotton duck or equally tough but more comfortable blue denim. Originally worn by gold miners, the new, near-indestructible overalls spread throughout the labouring classes, including cowboys, soon to be glamorised by Hollywood. When youth rebel stars Marlon Brando and James Dean wore them in the 1950s, the trousers’ status as lifestyle essentials was assured.
As leisure replaced labour so “jeans” replaced “overalls” and they became ubiquitous in the post-industrial world. Nobody really needs clothing tough enough to withstand the carrying of gold nuggets in the pockets, but they fit perfectly with military spec 4x4 sports utility vehicles, deep-sea divers’ watches, loggers’ boots and mountaineering apparel worn for shopping and lounging in wine bars. Rare is the fashion designer who hasn’t “designed” a pair of jeans, the only significant difference from the miners’ waist overalls of a century ago being the shape of the pretty pattern stitched on to the back pockets.
