ON PREVIOUS DAYS:
- YESTERDAY:
How Shrek Changed Hollywood - DAY BEFORE:
America's Last Witchtrial - DAY BEFORE THAT:
The Man Who Shot The Pope - DAY BEFORE BEFORE THAT:
Dynasty's Flamboyant Finale
ON THIS DAY
Make Me Some Levi's
Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis received a US patent for reinforcing work trousers with copper rivets on 20th May 1873; an innovation that would eventually create the global market for blue jeans.
Davis, a Jewish tailor in Nevada, had already been using metal fasteners to strengthen horse blankets and other hard-wearing goods. When a labourer’s wife asked him to make trousers sturdy enough to survive her husband’s punishing work, Davis realised that the weak points were the seams and pockets, and used copper rivets to transform them from fragile clothing into industrial equipment. So he wrote to Strauss, from whom he regularly bought cloth, proposing a partnership…
Strauss, a Bavarian immigrant who had arrived during the California Gold Rush and built a thriving wholesale business supplying miners, railway workers and frontier towns with practical goods, agreed to finance the patent and mass production. It proved a remarkable pairing of talents. Davis understood the practical needs of labourers; Strauss understood supply chains, branding and expansion. Together they turned reinforced work trousers into a product that could spread across the American West more profitably than panning for gold itself.
In this episode, Arion, Rebecca and Olly trace the origin of Levi’s enduring Two Horse logo of 1886; explain how the Second World War accelerated the adoption of the style; and reveal just how much money a pair of nineteenth-century Levi’s are worth today…
Further Reading:
• ‘A Riveting Story’ (Levi’s, 2023): https://www.levi.com/US/en_US/blog/article/lvc-a-riveting-story?msockid=23c525cc0876634208c637a40951628f
• ‘Cache of 19th-Century Blue Jeans Discovered in Abandoned Arizona Mineshaft’ (Smithsonian Magazine, 2022): https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/cache-of-19th-century-blue-jeans-discovered-in-abandoned-arizona-mineshaft-180981014/
• ‘150 years of Levi’s 501 blue jeans’ (CBS Sunday Morning, 2023): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LAxKoChwN8
#Fashion #Inventions #Jewish #1800s
ON THIS DAY
Make Me Some Levi's
Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis received a US patent for reinforcing work trousers with copper rivets on 20th May 1873; an innovation that would eventually create the global market for blue jeans.
Davis, a Jewish tailor in Nevada, had already been using metal fasteners to strengthen horse blankets and other hard-wearing goods. When a labourer’s wife asked him to make trousers sturdy enough to survive her husband’s punishing work, Davis realised that the weak points were the seams and pockets, and used copper rivets to transform them from fragile clothing into industrial equipment. So he wrote to Strauss, from whom he regularly bought cloth, proposing a partnership…
Strauss, a Bavarian immigrant who had arrived during the California Gold Rush and built a thriving wholesale business supplying miners, railway workers and frontier towns with practical goods, agreed to finance the patent and mass production. It proved a remarkable pairing of talents. Davis understood the practical needs of labourers; Strauss understood supply chains, branding and expansion. Together they turned reinforced work trousers into a product that could spread across the American West more profitably than panning for gold itself.
In this episode, Arion, Rebecca and Olly trace the origin of Levi’s enduring Two Horse logo of 1886; explain how the Second World War accelerated the adoption of the style; and reveal just how much money a pair of nineteenth-century Levi’s are worth today…
Further Reading:
• ‘A Riveting Story’ (Levi’s, 2023): https://www.levi.com/US/en_US/blog/article/lvc-a-riveting-story?msockid=23c525cc0876634208c637a40951628f
• ‘Cache of 19th-Century Blue Jeans Discovered in Abandoned Arizona Mineshaft’ (Smithsonian Magazine, 2022): https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/cache-of-19th-century-blue-jeans-discovered-in-abandoned-arizona-mineshaft-180981014/
• ‘150 years of Levi’s 501 blue jeans’ (CBS Sunday Morning, 2023): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LAxKoChwN8
#Fashion #Inventions #Jewish #1800s
ON PREVIOUS DAYS:
- YESTERDAY:
How Shrek Changed Hollywood - DAY BEFORE:
America's Last Witchtrial - DAY BEFORE THAT:
The Man Who Shot The Pope - DAY BEFORE BEFORE THAT:
Dynasty's Flamboyant Finale
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OLLY MANN
Olly Mann made his name with another trivia-wielding podcast, Answer Me This! with Helen Zaltzman – and now presents The Modern Mann, The Week Unwrapped, and Four Thought for BBC Radio Four. He also has an A-Level in History, so Dan Snow beware.
REBECCA MESSINA
Rebecca got a passion for podcasting working at The Week magazine and a passion for trivia appearing on University Challenge in 2011, making The Retrospectors her natural home.
ARION MCNICOLL
Arion started out in satirical news in Australia, then moved to the UK to work for ostensibly serious publications including The Times, CNN, and The Week… before realising that since around 2016 the news has all been satire really.
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