19/02/2015
In the beginning, there were Levi’s. In 1853, during the heart of the gold rush, a Bavarian émigré named Levi Strauss arrived in San Francisco from New York, looking to expand his family’s East Coast dry-goods business. Among his wares were blankets, cloth by the yard and durable work pants, sometimes called “jeans pants.” Then in 1872, one of Strauss’s customers, a tailor named Jacob Davis, made him the offer that would change his fortunes — and the way Americans dressed — forever. Davis had been buying Strauss’s blue denim and duck cloth to sew “waist-overalls” and had perfected a method of reinforcing them with the same copper rivets he used on horse blankets. Unwilling to put up the $68 necessary to patent his creation, he suggested that Strauss pay the fee in exchange for a half-interest in the business.
