By the s, jeans had come to symbolise the counterculture. Some high schools banned the garment, which only served to further enhance its status. By the late s and early s high fashion began to take an interest too. They were invented by Jacob Davis and Levi Strauss in and a worn still but in a different context. Jeans are named after the city of Genoa in Italy, a place where cotton corduroy, called either jean or jeane, was manufactured.
Levi Strauss came from Germany to New York in to join his older brother who had a dry goods store. There he sold, among other things, cotton cloth. One of his customers was Jacob W. Davis, a tailor from Reno, Nevada. Davis made functional items such as tents, horse blankets, and wagon covers.
One day, his customer ordered a pair of sturdy pants that could withstand hard work. When he wanted to patent them, he wrote to Levi Strauss, and they became partners. They opened a bigger factory, and that is how jeans were born. He applied for a patent but was turned down. Davis wanted a patent but worried about the time it would take for him to start the process again. Davis wrote a letter in the best English he could.
While the spelling is unconventional, his intent is clear: Jacob Davis wanted to be the sole patent holder. Davis intended to maintain the market in the rest of the country for himself. Initially, home seamstresses were used to create the product. As demand grew, Strauss added factory space and put Jacob Davis in charge of what eventually grew to be a factory of employees.
Davis remained with Strauss the rest of his career. He helped plan shirt lines as well as pants, and he still oversaw the Levi Strauss factory until his death in He was replaced by his son Simon Davis who was instrumental in pulling the company together after the earthquake. One other change to the pants occurred in the first year and is still part of the item today.
That double-stitched double arch is the oldest apparel trademark still in use today. During World War II thread for stitching was rationed, so the company painted the double arch on the pockets so that the trademark could continue. However, over time, people began to assume that jeans were invented by Levi Strauss. Then in Ann Morgan Campbell, then chief of the San Bruno branch of the National Archives, came upon the transcript of a federal court case from when Strauss and Davis were in court defending their patent.
In the transcript Jacob Davis testifies to how he came to make the first pair of jeans, his trouble obtaining a patent, and how he enlisted the help of Levi Strauss. Campbell wrote up her findings for the Nevada Historical Society Quarterly. Known as the Ben Davis Company, the logo features a friendly-looking gorilla and the clothes are referred to as the King Kong of work clothes.
Among other things, miners needed strong clothes that could withstand rough working conditions. Only problem he had is that clothes ripped at pockets of the pants.
He reinforced corners of the pockets with metal rivets and with that made them stronger. Because of that he suggested to Levi Strauss in that two of them hold the patent. Levi liked the idea and on May 20, , the two men received patent no.
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