Herringbone (1930): Basic blue jeans consist of twelve pieces of denim (four legs, two patch pockets, one fly front, and five belt loops), two front pocket linings, one zipper, two pocket rivets, one button, and hundreds of metres of thread. Denim is a cotton twill fabric, in which an undyed weft thread is woven under two blue-dyed, vertical warp threads, creating subtle colour variations. To find out why jeans are blue, visit walrusmagazine.com/more.
Levi’s Women’s (1970): In the sixteenth century, Genoese sailors — Genes — swabbed the decks in cotton twill pants. Cheap and durable, denim became the uniform of labourers in the nineteenth century. Natural indigo rubbed off onto the sweaty necks of American workers, producing “blue collars.” By the modern era, artists searching for authenticity were co-opting the working-class attire. William S. Burroughs suspected Kerouac’s On the Road was “responsible for selling a million pairs of jeans” to beatnik wannabes. Yves Saint Laurent, who famously said he regretted not having invented blue jeans, sent a denim topcoat and boots down his Paris runway in 1969.Today hipsters dry-age their jeans to achieve an authentic look, not washing them for up to eight months.
Levi’s Acid Wash (1970): When button-fly pants gained popularity in the 1830s, Mormon preacher Brigham Young denounced them as “fornication pants.” Contemporary denim fetish websites have broadened the field, featuring galleries of tight, wet, low-rise, and cut-off jeans, as well as “camel toes.” In the ’70s and ’80s, denim-clad crotches graced many an album cover, despite the persistent if erroneous belief that tight pants reduce sperm count. According to a 2003 article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, however, low-rise jeans can contribute to meralgia paresthetica (a compression of the lateral femoral cutaneous nerve). “Now that hip-huggers are back in fashion,” the authors wrote, “physicians can expect to see more patients with tingly thighs.”
Versace (1990): Globally, more than one billion pairs of jeans are sold annually, netting upwards of $15.8 billion (all figures US) — just shy of Chad’s GDP. Back in the 1880s, around $1.25 ($27, adjusted for inflation) would buy a new pair of Levi’s 501 jeans; a pair from that era was purchased for the company’s archives in 1997 for $25,000. Today’s humble 501s max out at $98, a paltry sum compared to apo Jeans’ diamond button and rivet jeans, which start at $4,000 and come with an appraisal sheet from a top jeweller in New York’s diamond district.
Seven (2000): Jacob Davis, a tailor for labourers in Reno, wrote to San Francisco merchant Levi Strauss in 1872, asking him to partner up on an “Improvement in Fastening Pocket Openings.” After obtaining the patent the following year, Levi Strauss & Co. began cranking out copper-riveted “waist overalls.” Workers’ pockets no longer ripped at the seams, but the back pocket rivets scratched their saddles, and the crotch rivet became hazardous in proximity to campfires.
