Levi Strauss

Born in Bavaria, Germany around 1825, Levi Strauss's family moved to New York in the early 1850's, but he arrived in San Francisco, California, in 1853, during the gold mining boom. He then decided to open a general store where he was also a tailor. His first work was in making trousers for miners who were badly in need of them.

Strauss did not posess any trouser material, but he did have some tent canvas which had come from De Nimes in France. He dyed this cloth in a dark blue colour and cut some work trousers for the miners, and called the cloth "denim" taken from the French name "De Nimes".

Initially, he made the trousers in two colours, indigo blue and brown cotton "duck". The brown was later dropped because the fabric did not get softer with use as the dark blue kind did.

These trousers were so strong and useful that he made hundreds of them, also known as "jeans". In 1873, he took out a patent for the garments.

Jacob Davis, a tailor from Nevada, joined Levi Strauss in 1873 and he started to put copper rivets on the stress points of the working trousers, so that they did not tear at those points. These made the jeans far more long-lasting.

Levi Strauss died in 1902 but his family business continued and now the word Levi is almost immediately synonymous with denim jeans.

A few years ago, a pair of original Levi jeans was found in an old mine in California, buried under a lot of rubble. They were cleaned and sold at auction for several millions of dollars.

From the 1960's Jeans have become a universal garment which was worn by men and women the world over. They were first featured in Vogue magazine in 1935. Marithe and Francois Girbaud, have been the leaders ever since 1962, in developing new styles of jeans, including faded, stonewashed, baggy, and bell-bottomed.

Find Levi's fashion @ the following eshops: