Jeans are named after the city of Genoa in Italy, a place where cotton corduroy, called either jean or jeane, was manufactured. Levi Strauss came from Germany to New York in to join his older brother who had a dry goods store. There he sold, among other things, cotton cloth. One of his customers was Jacob W. Davis, a tailor from Reno, Nevada. Davis made functional items such as tents, horse blankets, and wagon covers. One day, his customer ordered a pair of sturdy pants that could withstand hard work.
When he wanted to patent them, he wrote to Levi Strauss, and they became partners. They opened a bigger factory, and that is how jeans were born. Jeans marked culture of the last years probably more than we think. And now a small company has started making jeans in the birthplace of denim.
In his small workshop looking out on to a sun-drenched courtyard in a residential street in Nimes, Guillaume Sagot is cutting up a denim canvas with a giant pair of scissors. The year-old entrepreneur uses chalk first to draw the outline of the different jean segments before carefully cutting them to size.
The cuts will then be sent to Marseille, an hour and a half's drive away, to construct pairs of jeans at a small artisanal textile factory. Sagot started his business, Ateliers de Nimes, two years ago. The idea was simple: to make jeans in the birthplace of denim. But in a city that no longer has a textile industry that proved difficult from the outset.
I found a tailor in Marseille who taught me how to make them and I now do most of the work myself by hand. The factory in Marseille puts all the components of the jeans together. The term "denim" derives from the French "serge de Nimes", meaning "serge a sturdy fabric from Nimes". Yet the fabric is no longer produced anywhere in France. In , a man named Levi Strauss found himself in San Francisco trying to start a branch of his family business.
He sold a cotton fabric known as denim, which was picked up by a man called Jacob W. However, it was this new brand of denim trousers that would become popular, and it was all thanks to Mr. Davis was a tailor, and he started using the fabric Levi sold to make things like wagon covers, tents, and blankets.
However, one day he was asked to create something new: A pair of trousers explicitly designed for hard work. Because the material was such an essential part of the final product, he went into business with Levi. These two men went on to found one of the most important companies in the world that still produces denim jeans to sell to the public. It would be a while, however, before the denim pants made by Levi and Davis would be known as "jeans;" originally, they were called "waist overalls.
Long before the dawn of blue jeans, denim pants were used as workwear in a variety of applications. During the 19th century Gold Rush in California, a greater and greater need arose for durable men's workwear to clothe gold miners while they were on the job. At this time, denim didn't have the "rebel without a cause" connotation that it would take on a century later. Rather, this fabric was used exclusively for its durability, and it was used to make long-sleeved shirts as well as pants.
Since it's made from cotton, denim is natural and highly breathable, but the thick twill weave of this fabric makes it highly resistant to abrasions and tears. Denim is also easy to wash and patch, and its blue color makes it easily identifiable as workwear. So, the question in the minds of many is this: How did a rugged pair of work clothes end up becoming one of the most fashionable and everyday clothing items in the Western world?
Up until the Second World War, denim jeans still weren't highly popular. Jeans were seen for being what they were at that point: A work clothing option that was rugged and comfortable to wear. It was only when residents of eastern states started to travel to the American West for vacations that the concept of jeans caught on.
In the s and early s, it was fashionable to go to the western states for vacations to experience a whole new way of life: that of a working cowboy. For the people of the eastern states, who lived in suburbia, this life was intoxicating, and jeans were part of the package. So of course, they took them back home, and these types of pants got big. Being worn by either a famous singer or a heartthrob "bad boy" type does wonders for a garment's reputation, so jeans found themselves catapulted to the top of stardom alongside the men who wore them.
However, it was soldiers in WW2 who spread the jean look outside of America. While stationed across Europe and in Japan, the men of the U. With whisperings of the rebellious look already stirring, it was easy to see how jeans would spread to British soldiers and the other Allied troops who served with them. The outer warped threads were dyed blue or indigo and the inner weft thread was left in the original white colour.
This is why jeans and denim jackets are blue on the outside and white internally. In , in an endeavour to escape antisemitism and pursue financial prosperity, Loeb Strauss left his hometown Buttenheim, Germany to head for New York, where his brother owned a dry goods store textile shop. After learning the trade for a couple of years and changing his name, Loeb, now Levi headed West to San Francisco during the California Gold Rush to set up his own branch of the family shop in a more profitable environment.
During this era in San Francisco, most men were miners due to the lucrative promise of gold in the area. This resulted in a surge in demand for workwear that could withstand daily damage to the cloth. In , a local tailor known as Jacob Davis purchased some denim strips from Levi Strauss to craft high strength trousers for his own client.
However, as strong as the fabric was, the trousers fell apart at the seams after a few weeks of wear, which was especially problematic for workers who were storing gold ore in their pockets.
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