Inspired by his own pair of replica 1880s Levi’s, Wolfgang Wild explores the history of denim, from its Gold Rush origins to boot-cut wearing rodeo riders.
The longing to go back, to get back
When, in Spring 2014, I first pulled on a pair of replica 1880 Levis, precise in every eery stitch, the effect on me was profound. As the crisp dark, brand-spanking-new denim slid over my naked legs, I was, in a microcosmically minute way, entering the past. This act, this putting-on of immaculate, unworn clothing from the late nineteenth century had last occurred - if one discounts time-travellers and Brooklyn hipsters - by a Victorian man. So this is what it felt like - no, what it was - in this one behaviour, to travel in time.
What is time, and how can we travel in it? As creator of the site Retronaut - strapline: see the past like you wouldn’t believe - answering these questions has been my obsession, my work, and my pleasure since I started the site at the beginning of 2010. Actually, that’s not true, its been intrinsic to my nature ever since I can remember. As a child, I was nostalgic not just for my own past, but for all pasts, for the past. I longed to go back, to get back. And that longing never went away.
Faced with the impossibility of building a working time-machine - you know, an actual, H.G.Wells slash Doctor Who box-like transportation device - I have spent my life finding working alternatives. Like photographs that don’t fit with the way we imagine the past, that tear tiny holes in our collective map of time. Through these holes, I can voyage into alternative, earlier versions of now.
The exoticism of the past
People often ask me where, or rather, when, I would visit if I could go back in time? In fact, I don’t care. The past to me is as exotic as going abroad, all of it. Just to be in the past is enough. Though, as I have discovered, the past does not exist, any more than “abroad” exists. As soon as you get there, abroad changes from ‘there’ to ‘here’. And in the same way, ‘then’ changes to ‘now’. No-one has ever lived in the past. They have only ever lived in the unending now.
And yet, it is the exoticism of the past that continues to beguile me, and my replica 1880s jeans were the latest in a long and very varied series of improvised time-machines, devices designed to dislocate my temporal senses, to dissolve away the years like polish dissolves tarnish on a ring.
I have since become partially addicted to the replica garments created by the Levi’s Vintage Clothing laboratory. It is an expensive addiction, and the clothes come with dangerously seductive names like ‘Spur bites’ and ‘Nevada Barnstorm’.
Still, the high, the time-warping hit, is worth it to me. I will continue to clothe my legs in the latest Levis time-machine.
I wonder what the Victorian purchaser of the non-replica originals would think? I hope he would understand.
In 1853, one Levi Strauss left behind his family’s dry-goods business in New York to strike out in San Francisco. Strauss, like so many Americans of the time, hoped to make good in the Californian Gold Rush - not by prospecting for gold, but on the back, literally, of the miners. As young men flocked to the West Coast, many made their fortunes not underground but in supplying essentials to the unsuccessful many.
c. 1840s: Group of miners (California Historical Society)
Strauss sold cloth to a tailor named Jacob Davis. Davis himself was in receipt of a letter from the wife of a gold-miner asking whether he might not be able to manufacture a pair of pants (short for pantaloons) that did not fall apart - a pair that she did not have to repeatedly mend. Gold mining was a hard and difficult business that required tough clothing. Struck by the challenge, Davis found himself picking up a horse's blanket and, on examination, saw that it had rivets placed at the exact points of strain. Would not rivets at such points in a pair of pants provide the requisite reinforcement? They did indeed, and his riveted pants were an instant success with both miners and their wives.
Waist overalls
Buoyed by the interest in his product, Davis decided to take the significant step of patenting his design. But such a step, and specifically the 68 application fee, was beyond his means. So he turned to the man to whom he was already paying money - Levi Strauss. Together, they jointly applied for the patent, which was granted on May 20 1873.
Patent received, Strauss and Davis began the manufacture of their pants in earnest. The pants were worn not instead of regular pants but over the top, as a protective layer, much like an overall. Indeed, they were not called pants, or even jeans, but instead were marketed, sold and worn as “waist overalls”. Strauss and Davis gave the design the name XX, a cloth industry term meaning the highest quality, and also the name of the specific denim used, made in New Hampshire.
The original waist overall design had one, right side, back pocket which sported an Arctuate design, resembling the open wings of a bird in flight. This design was present on the overalls from the start of production, yet tantalisingly its precise derivation remains unknown - all Levi Strauss company offices, and the records they housed, were destroyed in the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906.
Its no use, they can’t be ripped
The other significant components of the first design were a watch pocket on the front right - that’s ‘watch’ as in ‘pocket-watch’ - suspender buttons for braces and a waist cinch at the back to allow the size to be adjusted to fit. No belt loops - belts were yet to be common-place accessories for pants.
In 1886, the company introduced a leather patch onto the waist with the distinctive image of two horses straining to tear apart a pair of the overalls, under the bold statement “It's no use, they can't be ripped”. This patch served a strategic purpose - it reinforced, metaphorically and literally, the idea of the high quality of Levi’s with the number of competitors increasing, and the legendary patent on the rivets due to lapse in 1890. At around this time, three figure lot numbers were allocated to Levi's products and the number 501 was given to the original Levi's trousers. Why? We will never know, the truth lost as another victim of the 1906 disaster.
War Production Board Limitation Order L181
In 1901 the company added a second back pocket and shortened the product description to 'overalls'. In 1922 belt loops appeared for the first time. Some wearers cut off the waist cinch to enable them to sport a belt more easily and eventually the company would drop the cinch.
It wasn’t until 1936 that Levi's added the distinctive red tag to the back pocket - another strategic move to differentiate their product. The lapse of the rivet patent meant that there were now several competitors making dark blue riveted jeans with a copy of the Arctuate design on the back pockets. But in 1943, Levi’s registered the Arctuate design - today it is not legally possible to reproduce it on clothing, even on historic reproductions.
With the entry of the USA into the Second World War, significant changes were made to the design in order that it comply with the War Production Board Limitation Order L181. Every non-functional detail had to be removed to conserve materials. The back cinch disappeared, as did the watch pocket rivet and the stitched Arctuate, replaced by a painted incarnation.
The bright blue of Levis
While jeans are seen as synonymous with cowboys, the actual cowboys who drove cattle across the early west wore them but rarely. A cowboy’s pants were wool or buckskin - waist overalls were for lowly miners. But the unbreakable link between jeans and the cowboy myth was forged in the white heat of Hollywood at the beginning of the 1900s. Ironically, when colour film became more widely used, the bright blue of Levi jeans was a problem for Hollywood’s colour film consultants and the pants were redyed to soften the overpowering blue of the originals.
Out of Hollywood rose the modern cowboy, including rodeo stars who worked with denim manufacturers to redesign jeans to offer a better fit and more comfortable ride. The Lee company employed rodeo rider Turk Greenough and his girlfriend Sally Rand, an exotic dancer to do just that. Rand slimmed down the thigh section of her jeans, but kept the bottoms wider, thus creating the 'boot cut'. Their design was marketed in 1941. And in 1947, the Wrangler company - a “wrangler” is a man employed to manage the horses of a cattle range - commissioned Bernard Lichtenstein aka 'Rodeo Ben', a Polish tailor who worked closely with cowboys, to help design jeans for rodeo use.