Reading. Blue jeans (Int)

Blue jeans

Whether you’re crashing out at home, working in the garden, or trying to look fashionably scruffy on a night out, whether you’re a guy or a girl, youthful or middle-aged, there’s one thing that can be confidently predicted about your wardrobe, and that is that you’ve hung a pair of jeans in there somewhere.

We all feel good in a pair of jeans – they’re cooler than trousers and skirts, and a bit more dressed up than leggings and tracksuit bottoms. And everything else you put on goes really well with any old pair of jeans.

When asked, most people could make an informed guess at the name of the man who invented jeans over a hundred and fifty years ago in California. That’s because Levi Strauss gave his name to one of the most famous brands of jeans in the world. Born in Bavaria in Germany, Levi didn’t arrive in the United States until he was eighteen. A few years later, he made his way to San Francisco to open a dry goods store. It was 1853 and the height of the California Gold Rush, and Levi was hoping to make his fortune by selling canvas for making tents. It didn’t take long before he realised that people weren’t all that concerned about having a tent – it was hard-wearing trousers they wanted.

Levi had the bright idea of making trousers from the tent canvas. They were a great success but they were also difficult to wear because the canvas was so rough. So Levi ordered a type of cotton cloth from France called ‘serge de Nimes’, which was gentler on the skin. It just happened to be blue, which the miners didn’t care about at all. Before long, the trousers became known as ‘blue jeans’ and the material they were made from became ‘denim’ (short for de Nimes).

Most historians will tell you that jeans were really invented in 1873, and that’s because it wasn’t until then that Levi Strauss patented his new item of clothing, and started manufacturing them in large numbers. He had invited a tailor called Jacob Davis, who worked for his family’s company, to join him in San Francisco, and it was Jacob who came up with the modern form of Levi jeans that we know today, with metal rivets around the pockets. Of course, one thing that Levi Strauss never imagined was how the popularity of jeans would endure, and how they would be transformed from a set of work clothes for miners into a must-have fashion accessory and something that princes and pop stars are happy to wear.