Levi's Big E History

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The Company Description of Its Time

Big E is a collector's term for a spelling. In regard to vintage jeans, the Big 'E' refers to Levi jeans manufactured before 1971 - actually used between 1936 and 1971, historical descriptions say, not sure what month they started and stopped. The mark itself is officially known as the 'Tab Device': the red Tab found near the back pocket on Levi jeans, a folded cloth ribbon in the structural seam of a rear patch pocket, with the word LEVI'S woven in white on the red ribbon. On a Big E pair, every letter is capital. That single typographic fact, readable in a second across a vintage shop, is what this whole page exists to explain and to date.

Reading a Big E Pair

The details on this page are identification points, and they are filed as a set. The Tab Device colour moved beyond red beginning in the early 1960s - to white, orange, black and silver - representing different lines of clothing, from corduroy flares to boot cut jeans to womenswear, so a coloured tab is not by itself a date. The (R) symbol on the tab denotes jeans made after 1950, when the mark appeared as the red Tab became a registered trademark. And the construction changed underneath the lettering: by 1966 technology had caught up with history, making it possible to bar tack the 501 jean's back pockets in place of rivets, maintaining durability while finally solving the decades-long issue of exposed rivets scratching furniture.

That overlap creates the page's most specific garment. The particular style of 501 jean with bar tacks and a Big 'E' red Tab only existed from 1966 to 1971 - five years in which the new pocket construction and the old capital lettering coincided. The historical record illustrates it with a specification: a rounded top block and tapered leg, made from Cone Mills 12 oz. red selvedge denim, two back pockets with bar tacks instead of rivets, a Two Horse leather-like patch, twin needle Arcuate stitching, and a Big 'E' double-sided red Tab. A photograph credited to Levi's on the historical record page, and an Apparel Search photograph from June 2017 of the modern little e version, are carried in the gallery on the history page by reference.

Why the Letter Changed, and a Counterfeit Warning

The change itself is dated 1971 on this page: the word on the red Tab device is now stitched in white with a capital 'L' only - the subject of this cluster's little e page - done to conform to the company's new housemark, the batwing adopted in 1967, in which the word Levi's is meant to be the proper name of the founder. Big E therefore names everything before that conforming change, and little e everything after it; the pair of pages together file one letter's before and after. This page stays on the before side: the imitators of the 1890s, the 1936 ribbon, the post-1950 registration symbol, the early-1960s colour tabs and the 1966-1971 bar-tack window.

The historical record closes with the practical warning that gives the identification details their stakes. Obviously, if you are shopping for authentic vintage Levi's from before 1971, you would have to look for additional identifying features; however, it gets tricky because counterfeiters know the identifying marks as well. Use this page as the Big E record - term, date range, Tab Device origin and construction markers - and the little e page for the post-1971 lettering it contrasts with. Neither page, the historical record implies, is a complete authentication guide, and this rebuild does not present it as one.

Photos

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