The history of denim and how jeans are made

During the waning days of the California gold rush, the wife of a local miner faced a problem.

When her husband’s denim work pants kept tearing, seamstress Jacob Davis decided to add copper rivets to key stress points, such as pocket corners and the base of the button fly, to prevent them from tearing.

Davis’ “riveted pants” were an instant success and, unbeknownst to him at the time, they would revolutionize fashion and usher in the official birth of blue jeans, which would become America’s signature garment around the world.

“This really democratized American fashion, and it’s also our biggest export to the world, because people identify jeans specifically as a part of American Western culture,” said Sean Grain Carter, a fashion professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. “It doesn’t matter your economic class or your social class. It doesn’t matter what your views are from across the political spectrum. Everybody wears denim.”

Denim has recently become a major sales driver for retailers large and small, with the global denim market reaching $101 billion this year, up 28% from 2020, according to data from market research firm Euromonitor International. From a major apparel company american eagle to Levi Strauss They are racing to corner that market, relying on A-list celebrities like Sidney Sweeney and Beyoncé to attract shoppers and boost sales in a volatile economy.

But if it weren’t for Levi Strauss, founder of the eponymous blue jeans company, Davis’ invention might never have gotten much beyond the railroad town that sprang up in the early 1870s.

As soon as Mr. Davis created the riveted pants, then called “waist overalls” or “overalls,” they “sold like hotcakes. He needed a business partner to patent them,” said Tracy Panek, Levi’s in-house historian. So he wrote to Strauss, a Bavarian-born immigrant who ran a successful wholesale business in San Francisco and had supplied Davis with the denim used to make the riveted pants.

“Pent’s secret is the Rivitz I had in my pocket,” Davis wrote in a letter to Strauss, according to PBS.

Mr. Strauss, a “shrewd” businessman, recognized the opportunity and agreed to partner with Mr. Davis, Mr. Panek said.

“This was probably the first time Levi’s actually manufactured his own product,” Panek said. “He was no longer just importing and selling other people’s goods; he was manufacturing them himself and selling them to retailers.”

On May 20, 1873, the two patented their riveted pants and eventually opened a factory on Fremont Street, near the current Salesforce Tower in San Francisco’s financial district.

They promised to provide workers with the most durable jeans on the market, and soon business boomed.

Through Strauss’ connections as a wholesaler, the company’s riveted overalls quickly spread throughout the United States and became the clothing of choice for miners, cowboys, farmers, and working men of all occupations that required durable clothing.

At the time, jeans were for work only, but as new denim manufacturers competed for a similar customer base, they sought to expand their product range to increase sales.

“Slowly and steadily in the 20th century, some manufacturers started making variations,” says Sonya Abrego, a New York City-based fashion historian. “There was something called spring-bottom pants that were more form-fitting, more dressed up, with a slightly flared design. I guess that’s what factory managers wear, right? As opposed to just someone on the shop floor.”

In 1934, Levi’s created the first ever line of jeans for women. Around that time, denim began to become popular for non-work situations, primarily for activities such as ranch vacations, camping, and horseback riding.

“So they were kind of wearing cowboy clothes or worker clothes, but they were wearing it in a resort environment,” Abrego said.

With highways finally connecting parts of the country, ranching vacations became popular, but few people tried to go to Europe during the war. To attract shoppers looking for jeans to take on vacation, companies like Levi’s began advertising their denim as “ranch defective” or “authentic Western riding wear,” according to archived ads from the time.

Although these cultural moments helped expand denim beyond workers, it wasn’t until after World War II, when American fashion as a whole began to change, that jeans became widely popular as casual attire.

By the end of World War II, a powerful American consumer was beginning to emerge. For years, Americans were forced to ration necessities like rubber, sugar, and meat, while at the same time being encouraged to save money by buying war bonds and siphoning off excess cash.

As the country transitioned from wartime to peacetime, Americans were ready to splurge and immediately began spending large sums of money on new cars, appliances, and clothing.

“When you have a little bit more money to spend, you’re going to see a lot more demand for leisure clothes, fun clothes, play clothes, clothes to wear to a backyard barbecue,” Abrego said. “For us now, clothes are similar to casual style.”

Slowly but surely, it became increasingly acceptable for men and women to wear jeans outside of work. Denim manufacturers then asked to allow jeans in schools.

“They wanted to sell to as many people as possible,” Abrego said. “The idea that jeans are appropriate for school also means they’re appropriate for everyday life.”

By the 1960s, denim manufacturers had expanded their products to include a variety of colors, fits, and styles. It became a symbol of the hippie movement and a mainstay on the Hollywood set.

Soon, denim was everywhere, and the 1970s saw the arrival of the iconic bell-bottom pants and the first versions of “designer jeans.” Denim pants were produced by labels and brands such as Calvin Klein and Gloria Vanderbilt whose designs had nothing to do with workwear or Western wear.

Since then, denim has remained a constant in global fashion. Abrego said that although silhouettes, washes and fits change over time, jeans never go out of style, which is what makes them so long-lasting.

“This is an 1873 design…what else do you see on the street that’s from 1873? It’s kind of wild when you think about it,” Abrego said. “You can talk about all the details, all the manufacturing changes, the different fits and finishes, but it’s still recognizable, and it’s still jeans. To me as a historian, that continuity is very compelling, because I can’t think of anything else that has stayed the same for so long.”