Icons – The Levis 501

Photography: Chloe Mallett
Fashion Direction:  Ursula Lake
Words:  Delwyn Mallett 

How the humble working man’s jean became an iconic, global style staple. 

Tuesday May 20 1873 was a milestone in the history of menswear, and ultimately women’s fashion too. It was the day that Jewish émigré tailor Jacob W Davis and Levi Strauss & Co. of San Francisco were granted US Patent No 139,121 for ‘work pants reinforced with metal rivets’. The blue denim ‘waist overalls’, originally produced as hard-wearing overalls for railway labourers, gold miners and cow punchers would gradually spread across the United States and ultimately the world and, with countless imitators, become the most successful article of clothing ever. Paupers, princes and presidents, film stars and rock stars have all felt equally at home in their blue jeans.    

Jacob Davis was born Jacob Youphes in Riga, Latvia, then part of the Russian Empire, in 1831. At the age of 23 he emigrated to America and adopted his new name. By 1868 after a variety of jobs he settled in Reno, Nevada, where he started to make tents and horse blankets for workers on the Central Pacific Railroad, purchasing his material, nine-ounce denim and ten-ounce white duck twill, from San Francisco wholesaler Levi Strauss. Strauss, also a Jewish immigrant, had arrived from Germany with his mother and two sisters in 1847 to join his two brothers who had started a dry goods wholesale business in New York. The California Gold Rush was in full swing with thousands of men, and women, making their way west to seek their fortunes and the Strauss clan decided to join the ‘rush’ by opening a San Francisco branch. Levi was dispatched to set it up, arriving in March 1854 and opening for business as Levi Strauss & Co..   

Meanwhile, back in Reno, legend has it that in 1870 Davis, at the request of a labourer’s wife fed up fixing her husbands torn trousers, ran up a sturdy pair of duck twill pants which he reinforced with copper rivets at all of the stress points. One happy wife presented them to her hubby who presumably became the envy of his workmates as pretty soon workers all along the railroad were asking for a pair of their own. Demand, at $3.00 a pop, was so great that Davis could barely make them fast enough and decided that a smart move would be to patent his riveted construction. Lacking the funds to apply for the patent Davis asked Strauss to help and the patent was duly granted in their joint names. Levi set up a factory to produce the work pants and Davis supervised the production of Levi’s riveted clothing until his death in 1908. 

 Levi’s patent expired in 1890 and the ‘501’ brand name was introduced along with the ‘Two Horse’ patch on the waist band so that customers could be assured that Levi’s were the original riveted overall. 

The first Levi’s had two front pockets and a tiny ‘watch pocket’ but only a single back pocket with the distinctive ‘Arcuate’ stitching. The luxury of an extra back pocket had to wait until 1902. There were no belt loops as they were buttoned for suspenders, or as us Brits would say, braces. Belt loops arrived in 1922 but the back half-belt cinch for tightening the waist was retained and didn’t disappear until the 1940s. 

The red tab stitched into the right rear pocket seam, as another sign of authenticity, arrived in 1936.   

All 501s were originally ‘shrink-to-fit’, in other words you had to buy a larger waist size and hope they still fitted after the first wash. Although Sanforizing, the process to pre-shrink cloth, became common in the 1930s it wasn’t adopted by Levi Strauss for 501s until 1967. 

Hard-core purists of course continued to prefer the shrink-to-fit version and indulge in the ritual of soaking in the bath with them on. 

‘Lady Levi’s’ were introduced in 1934 to cater for western gals and used a slightly lighter weight denim but it wasn’t until 1981 that Levi’s produced a cut low on the hips 501 shrink-to-fit button-fly jean for women in the original heavy weight denim. It was launched with the slogan ‘The only shrinking jean that tailors itself in the wash to fit every curve.’   

 If you like your Levi’s to display a well-worn look (and who doesn’t?) it might pay to become a ‘denim prospector’. It would be hard to beat a pair of ‘distressed’ Levis that turned up in 2022 and sold in auction for a staggering $87,000. Unlike modern ‘distressed look’ jeans there was nothing artificial about the wear – and a significant tear – on these as they were found at the bottom of a disused mine shaft where they had lain for over 130-years. Printed on the lining of a pocket is the claim ‘The only kind made by White Labor’. Now quite rightfully considered racist the slogan was introduced after the passing of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 barring Chinese workers from entering the US. Levi Strauss scrapped the slogan and the policy in the 1890s but the act itself was not repealed until 1940. 

 Ironically, so-called ‘White Labor’ hasn’t produced Levi’s since 2002 when the last US factory shut down. 

 Happy 150th birthday Levi’s 501 and we wish you many more to come. 

Hair by Craig Taylor
Make up by Sonia Deveney using Weleda
Models: Leila @PRM and Sophia at Models 1