The origin of Levis doesn’t actually start with Leob Strauss, yes, that’s Leob, who later changed his name to Levi. This fascinating story begins with his partner Jacob Davis. Leob was a dry goods merchant in San Francisco. Davis was a clothing manufacturer who bought his supplies from Leob. Davis approached Strauss in 1872 with a new idea to make the work pants known as overalls much more durable. Davis was responding to miners’ complaints that his clothing did not last long in the harsh working conditions. The seams of his pockets and the buttons that closed his waist and fly broke too easily.

In 1871 Davis attempted to use copper rivets to reinforce the seams. With rivets he could also join layers of thicker material. His new tough and durable work pants became an instant hit not only with miners, but also with other “working men of the American frontier” such as farm workers and cattle herders. The little copper rivet revolutionized workwear.

In 1872, Davis agreed to partner with Strauss in exchange for Strauss funding a patent application on the rivet idea.

In 1873, with the approval of the patent, Davis and Strauss immediately began mass-producing their work pants. They formed Levi Strauss & Company. “LS&CO” was engraved on each copper rivet. This still appears on Levi’s rivets to this day.

Levi Strauss & Company purchased its cotton denim fabric from the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company in Manchester, New Hampshire. It was the most durable line of fabric known as “XX”. This became the name of the first style of Levi’s jeans. It was also a very inexpensive fabric, as the indigo blue dye came from a plant grown and processed by slave labor in India, and the cotton was mass-produced on plantations in the south. Within a matter of years, this plant-based dye from India would be replaced by an even cheaper synthetic dye newly invented in Germany and mass-produced by the BASF corporation.

The next innovation in jeans appeared in 1886 when Levis began to be manufactured with a distinctive leather patch on the back waist of the jeans. The first image or logo was a pair of jeans thrown between two horses without breaking. This leather logo patch on the back waist of a pair of jeans is now a common feature of almost every jean manufacturer to this day.

These early jeans were originally called “waist jumpsuits.” They had two front and one back pockets along with an additional small “watch pocket” sewn into one of the front pockets, a feature still seen on jeans today. They also had a strap and buckle at the back of the waistband that acted like a belt to hold the pants firmly at the waist. And finally they also had rivets on the waistband to hold the straps.

Another distinction of Levi’s jeans is the bow tie stitch design seen on the back pockets of virtually all Levi’s jeans to this day. It’s called an “arcuate” stitch design. It is believed that he kept the cotton pocket linings in place in the initial manufacturing process. But no one knows for sure as all records were lost in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

During World War II, thread was rationed and thus this unnecessary stitch was discarded. However, it was so popular that the design was painted on the back pockets. Rare specimens of these jeans today sell for tens of thousands of dollars!

Since then, Levi Strauss & Co. has trademarked many styles of jeans: skinny, tapered, bootcut, relaxed, skinny, and two-way stretch, to name a few. There are currently 15 styles. As each patent expired, other manufacturers quickly copied the designs. However, Levi Strauss & Co. remains the world leader in the manufacture and sale of jeans.

Today, Levi Strauss & Co. together with Gap Jeans are leading another major challenge in the clothing industry. These two jean makers are leaders in their industry in advocating for workers’ rights, higher wages and an end to child labor, according to watchdog organization Free2Work.org. You can support these efforts by purchasing only jeans from manufacturers highly rated by this organization.

Credit for information in this article goes to “Denim” by Birgit Lohmann, Levi.com, and Free2Work.org.