Jewish Invention Myths: Blue Jeans
A very different but commoner form of ‘Jewish Invention Myth’ is the concept of that all-American cultural icon: the pair of jeans.
It isn’t often listed as a ‘jewish invention’ but it does come up occasionally. (1)
However, the basis for the claim is the classic story of the creation of ‘jeans’ by Jacob Davis (born Jākobs Jufess) and Levi Strauss in 1871 and 1873 respectively both of whom were jews.
As ‘History of Jeans’ puts it:
‘In 1851 Levi Strauss came from Germany to New York where his brother held dry goods store as a family business. From there, Levi Strauss went to San Francisco in March 1853, to start a West Coast branch of the business - Levi Strauss & Co. wholesale house. Before he came there, a Gold Rush began in California in 1848. Among other things, miners needed strong clothes that could withstand rough working conditions. One of the tailors that tried to make clothes that would fill this condition was Jacob Davis, tailor from Reno, Nevada, who purchased bolts of cloth from the wholesale house of Levi Strauss & Co. Only problem he had is that clothes ripped at pockets of the pants. He reinforced corners of the pockets with metal rivets and with that made them stronger. Jacob Davis tried to patent the idea but didn’t have the money to file the papers. Because of that he suggested to Levi Strauss in 1872 that two of them hold the patent. Levi liked the idea and on May 20, 1873, the two men received patent no.139,121 from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. After that Levi hired Jacob Davis to oversee production of the riveted pants at his factory - the Levi Strauss & Co. Denim from which the cloths of were at Levi Strauss & Co made came from Amoskeag Mill in Manchester, New Hampshire.’ (2)
And ‘Cotton Works’ also explains:
‘Denim as we know it today originated in 1860, when Levi Strauss & Co., which was making work pants out of a stiff canvas fabric, added serge de Nîmes to its product line at the request of customers wanting a softer, less chafing fabric.
In 1873, Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis patented their riveted work pant that kept the pocket and seams from bursting when doing heavy work. Denim was the staple of farm and industrial wear throughout the late 1800s and mid-1900s. It still retains the title of America’s favorite work pant today.’ (3)
We can thus see that the claim that Jacob Davis and Levi Strauss reaches back to around maybe 1860 at the earliest. However, this is where things get rather confusing.
The problem is that ‘jeans’ and specifically ‘blue jeans’ as type of cloth and a type of trouser/pant have a much older vintage. Jeans – which were often died blue using indigo hence ‘blue jeans’ - you see refers to a specific type of fabric that comes from the northern Italian port city of Genoa often worn by their sailors sometime during or before the 15th/16th centuries.
As ‘History of Jeans’ explains:
‘Jeans as name for trousers come from city of Genoa in Italy, a place where cotton corduroy, called either jean or jeane, was manufactured. Republic of Genoa exported the jeans throughout Europe. Weavers from the French city of Nimes tried to copy jean but could not.’ (4)
Now this all bears some explaining. The problem you see is that Jacob Davis and Levi Strauss called their trouser/pant ‘jeans’, but ‘jeans’ was a term already long used for an extent trouser/pant referring to a hard-wearing cotton corduroy trouser/pant not a denim one as ‘jeans’ today are.
‘Jeans’ manufacture was subsequently exported from Genoa (i.e., ‘genoese’ or ‘genes’ became ‘jeans’) to the nearby southern French city Nîmes where the weavers – according to the story – had difficulty reproducing the ‘jean’ cloth of cotton corduroy and instead developed their own variant of the cloth that was known as Serge de Nîmes (‘twill of Nîmes’) that was possibly what we call ‘denim’ today (i.e., ‘Serge de Nîmes’ became ‘de Nîmes’ [‘from Nîmes’] became ‘denim’). (5) In some accounts the ‘denim’ was already dyed blue on the outside with indigo before it was made into trousers/pants so would have been ‘blue jeans’ possibly as we know them today. (6)
Again, we hit a problem in the form that ‘denim’ as we would understand it was probably not the same ‘denim’ as today but rather ‘a cotton twill cloth made of wool and silk’. (7) This historical issue has been neatly solved by Lynn Downey in her 2007 ‘A Short History of Denim’ where she argues that the ‘Serge de Nîmes’ (or ‘denim’) referenced is actually an English heavy cotton fabric that was called ‘denim’ because it was a better and widely known trade name for a similar popular fabric. (8)
This makes a certain amount of sense because we know that by 18th century in North America ‘denim’ as we would understand it today was in wide use as was the cloth that was then known as ‘jeans’ and ‘blue jeans’ with ‘denim’ and ‘jeans’ marketed widely as workwear fabrics which would have necessarily included trousers/pants and the cloth for which was often produced in Lancashire, England. (9)
For example, in Richmond, Virginia on 25th March 1823 we find the following newspaper advertisement:
‘FIFTY DOLLARS REWARD, FOR JEREMIAH, or as he is commonly called Jerry Hatcher, lately a convict of the Penitentiary, who on the night of February 17 last did break through my store and carry off a variety of goods, together with about $20 in change and some ready made clothing, and has made his escape. He is about 4 1/2 or 5 feet high, stout and very well made, with light hair, and I expect has on blue Jeans coatee and brown pantaloons, as he took such from me and has been seen with them on. I expect he is either in Richmond, Petersburg or Lynchburg. Any person who will apprehend said Hatcher and deliver him to me, will meet with my thanks, and the above reward. BRIGHTBERRY BROWN [,] Red Mills, Buckingham [County, Virginia], March 14.’ (10)
As to where exactly this English fabric called ‘denim’ came from. This isn’t obscure either in that it almost certainly comes from the northern Indian fabric called ‘dungri’ now better known for the type of workplace overalls/clothing originally made from it: ‘dungaree’. (11)
As ‘History of Jeans’ explains:
‘‘Dungaree was mentioned for the first time in the 17th century, when it was referred to a cheap, coarse, thick cotton cloth, often colored blue but sometimes white, worn by impoverished people in what was then a region of Bombay, India a dockside village called Dongri. Hindi name of this cloth was “dungri”. Dungri was exported to England and used for manufacturing of cheap, robust working clothes. English began to call “dungri” cloth a little different, and it became “dungaree”.’ (12)
If we remember that the Portuguese had ruled the Indian city of Bombay – where ‘dungri’ comes from – since 1534 and that the Portuguese traded widely with India at the time bringing back products from the Indian subcontinent to Europe since then. Long before the British East India Company was incorporated in 1600 and the British government (in close collaboration with the British East India Company) took over the rule of Bombay from the Portuguese in 1661/1662. Then it reconciles Downey’s point that English ‘denim’ was a different fabric to French ‘denim’ and explains why this would be because of the acquisition Bombay by the British as a trading settlement in the period where a major expansion of the British Empire in North America was beginning to take place. (14)
This then tells us where ‘denim’ really came from and also explains the wide use of denim (as well as jeans) in trousers/pants in North America by the 18th century that we already know was the case.
How does this play into the claim that Jacob Davis and Levi Strauss invented ‘jeans’?
What it means is that denim trousers – which may well have often been dyed blue - were in widespread use in North America for two centuries or more alongside more traditional and softer ‘blue jeans’ of cotton corduroy.
This then necessarily means that Davis and Strauss could not have invented denim jeans as we would understand them today, but rather that they took an existing product (i.e., denim trousers/pants dyed blue), added small rivets in the pockets to help prevent pocket rips (13) and then called them the name of the softer workwear blue trousers/pants ‘jeans’ in all probability as a bit of clever marketing.
So, in reality then all that Jacob Davis and Levi Strauss actually did was put small rivets in the pockets of an existing workwear trouser/pant and then call it by the name of another less rough-wearing workwear product trouser/pant.
Therefore, Jacob David and Levi Strauss didn’t ‘invent’ jeans in any meaningful way but rather successfully marketed one slightly modified existing product using the name of another existing product.
So much for the ‘jewish invention’ of jeans!
References
(1) https://boulderjewishnews.org/2009/an-informal-list-of-jewish-inventions-innovations-and-radical-ideas/
(2) http://www.historyofjeans.com/jeans-history/who-invented-jeans/
(3) https://cottonworks.com/en/topics/sourcing-manufacturing/denim/denim-history
(4) http://www.historyofjeans.com/jeans-history/who-invented-jeans/
(5) Ibid.; https://www.hawthornintl.com/history-of-denim
(6) For example: https://www.hawthornintl.com/history-of-denim; http://facweb.cs.depaul.edu/sgrais/jeans.htm
(7) https://cottonworks.com/en/topics/sourcing-manufacturing/denim/denim-history
(8) Lynn Downey, 2007, ‘A Short History of Denim’, p. 1 (https://web.archive.org/web/20140809162800/http://eled3140spring2014.wikispaces.com/file/view/History-Denim.pdf)
(9) Ibid., p. 2; James Sullivan, 2006, ‘Jeans: A Cultural History of an American Icon’, 1st Edition, Gotham: New York, p. 13
(10) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeans#cite_note-2
(11) https://web.archive.org/web/20170619115433/http://facweb.cs.depaul.edu/sgrais/jeans.htm
(12 )http://www.historyofjeans.com/jeans-history/history-of-dungaree-fabric/
(13) Implied by Sullivan, Op. Cit., pp. 11-14
(14) https://www.vogue.fr/fashion/article/vogue-encyclopaedia-the-history-of-denim-jeans