Men's Levi's Fashion Brand

Levi Strauss & Co. is a privately held American clothing company known worldwide for its Levi's brand of denim jeans. The company was founded in May 1853 and has been making men happy ever since - a flourish worth keeping in a profile of the oldest record in this L letter. Founded in May 1853 makes Levi's, by a wide margin, the earliest founding date among the five L brands: thirty-six years before Lee, seventy before London Fog's Londontown company, and well over a century before Lucky Brand.

The product list is the longest in this letter, and it is worth reading as a whole wardrobe rather than a jeans list alone: jeans, trousers, shorts, shirts, jackets, sweaters, T-shirts, underwear, socks, accessories, shoes, dresses, skirts, belts, overalls and jumpsuits, and a "big and tall" range. Jeans built the name, but the company sells a complete clothing range for men and women, with the big and tall line showing the same size-breadth thinking that the fit system, below, shows for denim itself.

Fits, Numbers and the 501 System

Jeans are categorized by fit as: skinny, slim, straight, bootcut, taper, relaxed, flare and big & tall. That eight-way fit list - the brand's own categorisation - is the practical heart of buying Levi's. A man choosing a pair should start there - from the leg shape and the room through the seat and thigh that his body and his boots or shoes need - before he considers wash or colour, because the same style number in two different fits is, in wear, two different garments.

Most of the adult denim jeans are identifiable by trademarked three digit style numbers. 501s are available in styles for both men and women, the rest of the 500 series are marketed for men and the 300, 400, 700, and 800 series for women, with the exception of 751s which are classic straight zip fly jeans. This numbering is the brand's private language, with a clear grammar: the 501 at the centre, the 500s as the men's family around it, the higher and lower series as the women's families, and the 751 kept as the named exception. Vintage-minded readers are pointed to two details of Levi's history worth their own pages - the Big E tab and the little e tab - and to the arcuate stitching on the back of the jeans, each linked from this page.

The record's last chapter is a candid one. By the 1990s, Levi's faced competition from other brands and cheaper products from overseas, and began accelerating the pace of its US factory-closures and its use of offshore subcontracting agreements. In 2002, Levi Strauss began a close business collaboration with Walmart, producing a special line of "Signature" jeans and other clothes for exclusive sale in Walmart stores until 2006. Those lines belong in the profile, because they are part of the record: a privately held company, founded in 1853, adjusting its making and its selling to a changed market, with a mass-retail collaboration that ran from 2002 to 2006.

Reading This Levi's Record

Read as a buying guide, start with the system, not the single pair. Choose the fit family first - skinny, slim, straight, bootcut, taper, relaxed, flare or big & tall - then read the three-digit style number this way: 501s for the shared men's and women's original, the rest of the 500 series for men, and the 751 as the classic straight zip-fly exception. Beyond jeans, the range covers trousers, shorts, shirts, jackets, sweaters, T-shirts, underwear, socks, accessories, shoes, overalls, jumpsuits and belts, so a Levi's wardrobe, on this record, extends well past denim.

Levi's, under L in the Men's Fashion Brands directory: Levi Strauss & Co., a privately held American clothing company founded in May 1853, known worldwide for Levi's denim jeans, their eight fit families and their trademarked three-digit numbers. That record includes the 1990s competition chapter and the 2002-2006 Walmart Signature line.

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