Levi's Clothes Section:
Founded in 1853 by Bavarian immigrant Levi Strauss, Levi Strauss & Co. In 1873, Levi Strauss and Nevada tailor Jacob Davis patented the process of
putting rivets in pants for strength, and the world's first jeans — Levi's® jeans — were born. Today, the Levi's® trademark is one of the most recognized in the world and is registered in more than 160 countries.
Levi Strauss was born in Bavaria, Germany around 1825. His 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 opened a general store where he was also a tailor. His first work was making trousers for miners who were badly in need of them.
Strauss did not have 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 work trousers for the miners, and called the cloth "denim" 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, 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 much more long-lasting.
Levi Strauss died in 1902 but his family business continued and now the word Levi is 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 million dollars.
From the 1960's Jeans have become a universal garment 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 since 1962, in developing new styles of jeans, including faded, stonewashed, baggy, bell-bottomed etc.
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