Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis received a US patent for reinforcing work trousers with copper rivets on 20th May 1873; an innovation that would eventually create the global market for blue jeans.

Davis, a Jewish tailor in Nevada, had already been using metal fasteners to strengthen horse blankets and other hard-wearing goods. When a labourer’s wife asked him to make trousers sturdy enough to survive her husband’s punishing work, Davis realised that the weak points were the seams and pockets, and used copper rivets to transform them from fragile clothing into industrial equipment. So he wrote to Strauss, from whom he regularly bought cloth, proposing a partnership… 

Strauss, a Bavarian immigrant who had arrived during the California Gold Rush and built a thriving wholesale business supplying miners, railway workers and frontier towns with practical goods, agreed to finance the patent and mass production. It proved a remarkable pairing of talents. Davis understood the practical needs of labourers; Strauss understood supply chains, branding and expansion. Together they turned reinforced work trousers into a product that could spread across the American West more profitably than panning for gold itself.

In this episode, Arion, Rebecca and Olly trace the origin of Levi’s enduring Two Horse logo of 1886; explain how the Second World War accelerated the adoption of the style; and reveal just how much money a pair of nineteenth-century Levi’s are worth today… 

Further Reading:

• ‘A Riveting Story’ (Levi’s, 2023): https://www.levi.com/US/en_US/blog/article/lvc-a-riveting-story?msockid=23c525cc0876634208c637a40951628f

• ‘Cache of 19th-Century Blue Jeans Discovered in Abandoned Arizona Mineshaft’ (Smithsonian Magazine, 2022):  https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/cache-of-19th-century-blue-jeans-discovered-in-abandoned-arizona-mineshaft-180981014/

• ‘150 years of Levi's 501 blue jeans’ (CBS Sunday Morning, 2023): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LAxKoChwN8

#Fashion #Inventions #Jewish #1800s

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The Retrospectors are Olly Mann, Rebecca Messina & Arion McNicoll, with Matt Hill.

Theme Music: Pass The Peas. Announcer: Bob Ravelli. Graphic Design: Terry Saunders. Edit Producer: Ollie Peart.

Copyright: Rethink Audio / Olly Mann 2026.

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