The History of Denim Jeans

A female welder at work at the Electric Boat Co in Connecticut in October 1943. The firm produced boats and submarines during World War II

Before '90s super Claudia Schiffer strode the Chanel runway in double denim, and before Brigitte Bardot slipped into her cropped jeans to bewitch the Cote d'Azur, reinforced blue denim was the chosen uniform of miners, labourers and welders. Well over a century after the fabric was patented by tailor Jacob Davis and wholesaler Levi Strauss, blue denim remains a mainstay of wardrobes the world over.

The word “jean” emerged in the 1800s, and referred to a twill cotton cloth used for trousers, but the textile soon became conflated with the garment it was most commonly used for. Blue jeans, now called “denim”, were originally made from this fabric and manufactured in the French town of Nîmes (bleu de Nîmes). There is still debate over whether the word “denim” is an anglicised version of the French textile, or the French name was given to an already existing English product to give it prestige. By the 20th century, “jean” was the term for a wide range of cotton or denim informal trousers.

Classic jeans as we’ve come to know them – made from indigo-dyed denim with pockets and sturdy riveting suitable for workwear – were patented in 1873 by Jacob Davis, a tailor, and Levi Strauss, the owner of a wholesale fabric house in San Francisco. The copper rivets used to reinforce the pockets were appreciated by miners and other labourers, who complained about frequent pocket rips. Strauss and Davis initially made jeans in two types of fabric, brown duck and blue denim, but the creation of the denim 501 style in 1890 helped the latter fabric take off. Over the course of the decade, design improvements were made: Strauss added a double arch of orange stitching for further reinforcement and to identify them as Levi’s; belt loops appeared in 1922; zippers replaced the button fly on some styles in 1954. But when Strauss and Davis’s patent ended in 1890, other manufacturers were free to reproduce the style. OshKosh B’Gosh entered the market in 1895, Blue Bell (later Wrangler) in 1904 and Lee Mercantile in 1911. During the First World War, Lee Union-Alls jeans were standard issue for all war workers.

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