Fashion History Lesson: Levi’s 501 Jeans (Part 1)

Jun 18, 2023 News

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Kaieteur News – (Fashionista) On May 20, 2023, an icon turned 150 years.

This year, Levi’s celebrates the 150th anniversary of when its founder, Levi Strauss, and a tailor from Reno, Nevada received a patent for the process of riveting pants — i.e. adding a metal bolt to bind the fabric together, which made clothes more secure in areas on the receiving end of a lot of pulling and stress. It was a significant turning point in how we make clothes, specifically workwear. And it gave rise to one of the brand’s biggest, consistent hits: the 501 jean.

“As much as it’s evolved and been tweaked at times, it’s so recognizable and identifiable,” says Karyn Hillman, the chief product officer at Levi’s. To this day, Levi’s doesn’t like to mess with the 501 much: “We’re really thoughtful and respectful of the tenets of the 501 — the button-fly closure, the shrink-to-fit fabric, the tabs, the copper rivets. We basically shepherd the tenets through the process and keep tethered to that.”

Levi’s considers the 501 its best-selling fit of all time. (The company is projecting total net revenue for the 501 product family to reach $800 million in FY2023.) It’s equally popular on the secondhand market: The 501 represented “nearly half of all Levi’s jeans orders on Vestiaire Collective” in 2021 and 2022, according to Sophie Hersan, the site’s fashion director; in April 2023, searches for the 501 were 99% higher than those for 511s, 505s and 721s on the platform.

It’s evolved from a single pair of “overalls” into a whole category of styles; all anchored in those design features first introduced a century and a half ago. Ahead, read about the history of the 501, from the patent that started it all to its enduring appeal.

 THE ORIGINS OF THE 501

The idea for what became Patent #139,121 originates from the aforementioned tailor, Jacob Davis. At the time, Strauss operated a successful wholesale business out of San Francisco. Davis was one of his clients.

“He was living in Reno, close to Virginia City, where the Comstock Lode had been discovered, and that meant that there were lots of people moving to that area for work, who needed tough pants,” says Tracey Panek, the in-house historian at Levi’s. “The story goes that Davis had been asked by a woman whose husband needed some tough work pants to create a pair that could fit and not tear. He’d been working on a horse blanket using metal to attach it to a saddle, and he had the idea: What if I take a little bit of the metal and add it to the pockets?”

Davis started making these pants in small batches, and would continuously sell them out. “He couldn’t keep up with the demand,” says Panek. “That’s when he eventually wrote a letter to his fabric supplier.”

He wrote Strauss of his invention, and sent two “samples” of the riveted pants: one made out of denim, the other out of duck cloth — both popular workwear materials at the time. “Davis must have been pretty savvy in terms of understanding that he needed someone who could help him create a network, and also someone who was willing to take a good idea and go with it,” Panek says. “This would’ve been some 20 years after Levi had arrived in San Francisco, and had a network all over the American West. And being an experienced businessman, he was willing to take a risk.”

At the time, Strauss operated strictly in wholesale, but he found someone who could manufacture the riveted pants for them. They applied for the patent, and, months after it was granted, Levi Strauss & Co. started selling the pants. (So, in addition to being the first riveted pant, the 501 was Levi’s first proper product.)

The pants had rivets, of course, as well as a single back pocket with Arcuate stitching (that’s the stitch design you see on pockets), a watch pocket and a button fly. There was also a cinch at the back, to tighten the fit when wearing overalls, and buttons for suspenders.

“I will refer to them as the original baggy pant, because they were just big and oversized, and intended to be that way because they could fit on various body shapes, especially if you were a mining company and men were coming in, wearing the same pair, taking it off and putting it on a peg until the next shift,” Panek explains.

In 1886, Levi’s added the now-famous leather patch with the drawing of two horses pulling apart a pair of pants, trying to break them apart, to illustrate the garment’s durability.

THE EARLY 501S: “WAIST OVERALLS”

While denim has a long history before Strauss and Davis came in, Daniel James Cole, adjunct assistant professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology and co-author of “The History of Modern Fashion,” argues that the partnership was nonetheless brilliant.

“Anybody who’d been [mining for] gold wearing wool — that clothing would’ve just rotted. By giving them this heavyweight twill weave cotton, they would withstand much more wear and tear, and they dry faster,” he says. “Strauss’s ability to recognize the market niche and tap it is one of the greatest in fashion’s history.”

At first, Levi’s made the riveted pants out of both denim and duck cloth (a heavy cotton canvas) but quickly discontinued the latter. Panek theorizes it had to do with how the denim hid dirt stains better: “If you’re an outdoor worker and you’re in mud and around dust, those stains just aren’t going to show as much.”

The denim came from the famous Amoskeag Manufacturing Company in Manchester, New Hampshire. They weren’t called jeans, or even 501s: They were marketed as “waist overalls,” since men would put them on over their actual clothes when they went to work.

When the patent on riveted pants became public domain in 1890, Levi Strauss & Co. started referring to its products by lot numbers, to have its styles stand out in the market. That’s how the 501 got its name. (The reason for the specific number, we don’t know: The Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 caused massive devastation, including a fire that destroyed Levi Strauss & Co.’s headquarters and factory — and many of the records that might have held the answer.)

Also in the late 19th century, the U.S. saw an influx of immigration from China, which resulted in growing anti-Chinese sentiment and racist legislation, like the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 — the first piece of legislation in American history to restrict immigration, according to the Department of State — and the Scott Act in 1888, which barred even legal residents from re-entering the U.S. after visiting China. It took decades for these laws to be repealed and condemned, but we see remnants of them in a variety of artifacts, including a pair of Levi’s 501 from the 1880s, sold at auction in 2022 for $76,000, bearing a label inside the pocket that reads “the only kind made by White Labor.”

“Levi Strauss & Co. is a company with a long and mostly proud heritage. Across our history, we have strived to do good in and beyond our business and to be a positive force for equality and racial justice. But there have been times when we’ve fallen short,” a spokesperson for Levi’s said shortly after the pants were sold, acknowledging that the company “adopted an anti-Chinese labor policy” after the Chinese Exclusion Act, but that these (and the slogan) were dropped in the 1890s.

Next week we will continue with the rich history of Levi jeans.

 

 

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