The Evolution Of Jeans

The day is January 24th 1848. Its a mild California day at Sutter's Mill in Coloma just outside of Sacramento. You see a man by the name of James W. Marshall, a laborer for John Sutter working on a water mill he is building for Mr. Sutter. When all of a sudden his eyes grow big and he stares at something shiny in the sun in the palm of his hand. His first thought is it has to be something of no significance. It would be impossible for a guy like him to come across gold while working. Marshall quietly went to Mr. Sutter in hopes that he would not draw unneeded attention from the other workers. Mr. Sutter, surprised by his workers findings tested the particles in secret. Sutter was surprisingly upset when the particles came back to be in fact, real gold. Sutter was worried that with the findings of gold, there would be a mass search for gold, which would then destroy the agricultural empire he built on his land. Rumors soon spread by mouth of the gold found and soon in March, the word was confirmed by San Francisco newspaper publisher and merchant Samuel Brannan that there was indeed gold. Soon Samuel scrambled and made a store to sell gold finding supplies and walked through the streets of San Francisco with a vial of gold in hand saying "Gold! Gold! Gold from the American River!". Soon after the first wave of people were residents of California themselves. Soon after several thousand Oregonians arrived from the Siskiyou Trail, then plenty by ship from Hawaii, and several thousand Latin Americans. By the end of 1848 and beginning of 1849 there were people from almost every continent coming to California in searches of getting wealthy. It is an estimated 90,000 people traveled to California by the end of 1849.

With all of the people in mines and in the wilderness on the search for gold, there was a great demand for any type of clothing a person could wear that would stay durable with all the working, but also fit nicely so it would be easy to move about. Although the earliest connection to the jean was the Indian export of a thick cotton like cloth called 'dungarees' in which they sold in the 16th century in the Dongarii Fort near Bombay to sailors that cut the fabric to fit as clothes, there was no popularity about the fabric at all. Actual Jean Fabric that we are more commonly used to today was created in Chieri Italy for the genoese navy because they needed all purpose pants to wear that were able to wear wet or dry, and able to roll up when swabbing the deck.

All the while in California during the gold rush there was thousands upon thousands of people settling in the American River Area. With all the people there was massive amounts of supply and demand for tents, food, clothes and other necessities In 1853, a man by the name of Leob Strauss, a German immigrant, migrated from New York to California with a small supply of dry goods, in thought of taking advantage of the supply and demand in California by opening a branch of his brother's New Yorks Dry good business. Shortly after Leob changed his name to Levi Strauss. Upon arrival in California a prospector asked what Strauss was selling. When Strauss told him he had a fabric for tents and wagon covers, the prospector said, "You should have brought pants!" saying he couldn't find a pair that was durable enough to last. Upon hearing the prospectors problem, Strauss had the material made into waist overalls. The miners like the pants and how they fit and worked, but complained that the material chafed the skin. Levi then changed the material to a twilled cotton cloth from France called 'serge de Nimes' which was about equally as durable, but more with stand able on the skin. Levi Strauss had mad the first usable pants for the California Gold Rush. After using this in the mines for a while, miners came back to Strauss and complained that the pockets tore away from the jeans easily. Strauss tried many ideas to help solve this problem, but his ideas came back unsuccessful. In 1868 a man named Jacob Davis settled in Reno Nevada tailoring clothing and manufacturing horse blankets. Jacob Davis also came across the same problem with his horse blankets, the fabric would always tear. Jacob Davis soon designed copper rivets to put into the fabric to keep it from tearing away. In the late 1870s a woman walked into Jacob Davis' store looking for a pair of cheap pants for her rather large husband. She complained that the pockets would not hold up and he would go through them faster than she could buy them. Upon finding that the man did not hold up well with thread alone, Davis decided to try out the rivets that he used on his horse blankets, and the pant pockets held up nicely on the over sized man. Davis then started putting on rivets on all of his jeans. After a while jean selling competitors started stealing his idea of using rivets on jeans. Quickly after finding this out Jacob Davis applied for a patent for the process but consequently did not have the sixty eight dollars required to file the papers. Davis decided he needed a business partner. In 1872 he wrote to Levi Strauss and offered Strauss a deal if he paid for the patent. Levi, saw the potential in the proposal and accepted it. On May 20, 1873 the two received the patent #139,121 from the US Patent and Trademark office. Although denim pants had been around as work wear for many years, it was the first use of rivets that created what we now call jeans. "Waist overalls" was the traditional name for work pants, which is what these first jeans were called. Sometime during 1873, the first riveted clothing was made and sold. (the exact date is not known because all records of the time were destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire.) Jacob Davis was in charge of manufacturing when Levi Strauss & Co. opened its two San Francisco factories. In 1886 Levi sewed a leather label on their jeans. The label showed a picture of a pair of jeans that were being pulled between two horses. This was to advertise how strong Levi jeans were: even two horses could not tear them apart. Holding a patent on this process meant that for nearly twenty years, Levi Strauss & Co. was the only company allowed to make riveted clothing until the patent went into the public domain around 1891. When the patent expired, dozens of garment manufacturers began to copy the riveted pants.

In the 1930's, Hollywood made lots of western movies. Cowboys - who often wore jeans in the movies-became very popular. Many Americans who lived in the eastern states went for vacations on 'dude ranches' and took pairs of denim 'waist overalls' back east with them when they went home. In 1935, Vogue flagged up Lady Levi's (the first women's jeans) as: 'The uniform for a Dude ranch or a ranch near Reno.' Although one would think that this was liberating to woman,