The riveting history of blue jeans

The idea for this story came to us at a coffee shop in Ann Arbor, MI, last week. While on vacation, a couple of our team members observed 20 out of the 27 people sitting around us were wearing blue jeans (including us).

Jeans are a $100+ billion global industry, and worn by millions of people every day. But not a single member of our table knew how they originated. So we placed a bet – would anyone else in the shop know? (Long story short... no.)

👖 Thus, our story begins… with a twill cotton fabric originating in the 1500s. Denim was produced in France, Italy, and India during that time and used to make durable work trousers and overalls, according to economics professor Michael C. Howard.

But the modern-day jeans we know weren't introduced in the US until the mid-1800s, when two men – one whose name has more-or-less faded into obscurity and one whose name we still know to this day – linked up to form a partnership during the Gold Rush in the American West.

The two men in question? Jacob Davis and Levi Strauss.

💡 The groundbreaking discovery… Jacob Davis was a tailor in Reno, Nevada. One day, in 1871, "[a] miner's wife came up to Davis and asked him to come up with pants that could withstand some abuse," American History Museum curator Nancy Davis (no relation) told Smithsonian Magazine.

Davis scrutinized the metal fasteners he used in his work on harnesses and other objects, ultimately deciding to place these copper rivets where pants usually ripped: the pockets and the crotch.

This worked like a charm. Local miners lined up to purchase these rivet-strengthened pants – and Davis wanted to make sure no one stole his idea.

But he couldn't afford the $68 necessary to obtain a patent (~$1,681 in today's dollars). So he approached Levi Strauss, a dry-goods store owner who had sold him the durable "duck cloth" canvas for the pants in the first place, about a partnership.

Strauss agreed. And on May 20, 1873, the two were granted a patent for the first "official" blue jean, solidifying their early lead in a brand-new market category entirely of their own creation: riveted pants. (Fun fact: The pants were dyed indigo, which is where "blue jeans" comes from.)

Jeans stayed extremely popular as sensible workwear until becoming more mainstream in the 1920s and 1930s... eventually becoming so popular as to lead 74% of a random coffee shop to adorn themselves in the pants on a given day.

And to think it all started with a tiny little rivet.