The World by the Seat of My Pants

There are few American icons as universally recognized and yet deeply personal as a pair of Levis jeans.  But today's classic denims may not exactly match the images fostered by our imaginations.  First brought to market in 1873 by dry goods merchant Levi Strauss and tailor Jacob Davis, who hit on the idea of copper rivets at pocket corners and other stress points, their creation by a pair of  European Jewish immigrants in itself tells a very American story.  Designed originally to be worn by men working in the outdoors, the descendents of these denims have not only clothed factory and construction workers, but starting in the 1950s, cultural rebels like Jack Kerouac, Marlon Brando, Elvis Presley and James Dean.

No doubt the cachet of these mid twentieth century bad boy personalities helped make jeans the preferred uniform of the counterculture of the 1960s, when I started wearing them.  Ever since, they have been my pants of choice and I have enough to wear each day of the week, if I want.  In addition to my greening of America recollections, I conjure images of Levis worn by miners and loggers in the old west whenever I see that distinctive leather patch showing a couple horses vainly trying to pull apart a pair of those original riveted trousers.  But likely the real reason I’ve worn Levis for almost half a century was, according Stephan Yaffa’s Big Cotton, anticipated by Strauss himself who realized “that people formed a curiously intimate relationship with their denims, much like the affection they developed for a pet.”  Yaffa noted that when “blue jeans become more pliable through laundering, they caressed areas of the body they initially clutched.”

Perhaps out of boredom or a hyperactive childlike curiosity, I’ve recently begun reading labels on my Levis, finding that the places where they are made continue to tell an American story.  From the earliest days until the mills closed in the mid 1930s, Levis denim was largely made by the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company of Manchester, New Hampshire, some of whose fortress-like brick buildings still loom over the Merrimack River.  Later cloth making moved to mills in the American south.  Although some Levis are still made in this country, in recent decades American plants have closed and today cloth is woven and pants assembled around the globe.  A recent foray into my closet revealed jeans made in Egypt, Bangladesh, Mexico and Lesotho.  At my local retailer, I also found them from Columbia, Pakistan, Haiti, Cambodia, and Vietnam.

How strange that the very private act of pulling on my jeans in the morning should create a slight connection to, or at least thoughts of far flung places.  The label reminds me that there’s a complex tangle of outsourcing, labor, occupational health and safety, and environmental issues in every pair.  I wonder about these exotic locales, none of which I’ve visited, and the people who make an iconic American product I’ve been wearing almost my entire life.  We are citizens of the world it seems, sometimes in very personal and unexpected ways, regardless of how many languages we speak or the distances we travel.  As a result, a trademark national brand of denims that once wore like iron, now wear with a bit of irony as well.