Levi's

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Riveted Denim and a Corrected Origin Story

Levi's are defined as a brand of riveted denim jeans manufactured by Levi Strauss & Co., and the entry takes care to separate the brand's advertising mythology from its manufacturing record. Contrary to an advertising campaign suggesting that Levi Strauss sold his first jeans to gold miners during the California Gold Rush — which peaked in 1849 — manufacture of denim overalls only began in the 1870s. Modern jeans began to appear in the 1920s. That chronology matters because the riveted work overall of the 1870s and the modern jean of the 1920s are different products sharing a material: denim, and a company. The rivet is the through-line, a functional reinforcement that became the brand's identifying construction detail and the word used to define the product itself in the opening line.

Competition, Closures and a Global Supply Base

By the 1990s, the brand was facing competition from other brands and cheaper products from overseas. Production facilities in Canada and the United States closed, and supply of finished products came from places like China, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Lesotho, Dominican Republic, Colombia and Mexico. That list describes a supply base spread across Asia, Africa and the Americas, replacing production in the brand's home continent. For a product defined by an American workwear origin, the shift is the central business fact of the period covered here: the jeans continued under the same name and the same tab lines, while the places making them changed completely. The competitive pressure named as the cause — other brands, and cheaper products from overseas — is the same pressure that moved the production.

Tab Lines and a Pair of Jeans With an iPod Dock

Levi's product lines include Red Tab, Orange Tab, Signature, Type 1 — discontinued — and Engineered. A tab-based line system lets one brand of riveted denim jeans be divided into recognisably separate families without renaming the product. Alongside the lines sits an advertising milestone: in 2000, the "Launderette" advert for Levi's 501s was named the 6th best television commercial of all time in a poll conducted by The Sunday Times and Channel 4. The brand's experiments reached clothing technology as well. The RedWire DLX Jeans were designed to control a wearer's Apple iPod music player, with an iPod remote control and docking station fitted in the pockets and attached headphones, to be launched in August 2006 at approximately $200. Levi Strauss was not the first to produce iPod-compatible clothing, but it is believed to be the first to do so for trousers or jeans.