The popularity of jeans

Dear Matt: When did jeans get so popular? Where did they come from? — Wendell, San Diego

The unofficial American uniform is purely a domestic invention. The pants date back to Gold Rush days, when a 17-year-old San Francisco tailor named Levi Strauss noticed that miners’ trousers wore out quickly. He filled the marketing gap with tough white canvas pants that would take more abuse. But canvas was stiff and uncomfortable, so Strauss began making the pants out of a softer material woven in Nimes, France, that was called serge de Nimes, eventually Americanized to the word “denim.” When he dyed the denim an indigo color to help hide stains, he had the magic formula for the classic American jeans. (“Jeans” is an Anglicized version of Genes, the French name for the Italian town of Genoa, where Strauss’s original white canvas was milled. So in the 1860s, “jeans” didn’t refer to the denim pants we wear today but to their canvas precursors. Levi’s blue-dyed denim became popularly known as “blue jeans,” even though they were a completely different fabric.) The trademark rivets in a pair of Levi’s were added by Strauss when he noticed that the weight of the miners’ tools tore the seams. At the time, he also included a rivet at the base of the fly to reinforce the crotch of the pants but received many complaints from miners who said the metal heated up when they were crouched around a campfire and the resulting burn was uncomfortable, to say the least. Fashion historians credit a Vogue magazine spread in the 1930s with first turning jeans from practical workwear into a fashion statement.