Levi's
Founded 1853; the trouser patent in 1873 · San Francisco, United States · Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis
Levi Strauss & Co. did not invent denim trousers: it invented riveting them. The 1873 patent, signed with the tailor Jacob Davis, is the birth certificate of the jean as it exists today, and the 501 has been the same trouser ever since.
History
Levi Strauss, a Bavarian émigré, set up a wholesale dry goods business in San Francisco in 1853 to sell to the gold rush miners. Twenty years later the Latvian tailor Jacob Davis, a customer of his in Reno, wrote to him: he had solved the problem of trousers tearing at the pockets by fitting copper rivets, but did not have the sixty-eight dollars for the patent. They went into partnership, and on 20 May 1873 the Patent Office granted number 139,121. That trouser came to be called the 501. The red tab on the back pocket dates from 1936 and was added to tell them apart from imitators. In the fifties the jean went from workwear to the clothing of rebellion — Brando, Dean — and from there to a worldwide uniform.
Iconic models
501 Original (1873)
The trouser from the patent. Straight cut, button fly, and the same name since 1890.
Trucker Jacket, Type III (1962)
The denim jacket with two pockets and V-shaped seams. Everyone copies it.
505 (1967)
The 501 with a zip; the one the Ramones wore.
Red tab (1936)
Not an ornament: it was added so a Levi's could be told at a distance, from behind.
Worth knowing
What was patented in 1873 was not the trouser but **the rivet**. Denim already existed; what did not exist was a pocket that could take the weight of tools.
