Vintage Goldminer Levi's Jeans from 1880s and 1890s found (PICS)

What a 132-year-old pair of Gold Miner's jeans from the 1880s looks like (see image above)

To mark the 142-year anniversary of Levi’s 501 jeans, the apparel maker announced in May 2015 that its archives department had acquired a pair that dates back to the 1880s. And, despite the fact that they are one of the oldest pairs of jeans in existence, they look pretty good. “Except for wear marks and a few minor holes and tears, the pants, which date to around the 1880s, are pristine,” according to a Levi’s blog post on the acquisition.

Levi’s has named the duds the “New Nevada Jeans,” as they were discovered in the Silver State. They sport a few minor differences from the ubiquitous 501 model. “The yoke is narrower, and the leather patch is in the middle of the waistband, rather than on the right side,” according to the company.

Originally called “overalls,” blue jeans date back to the American Gold Rush era of the late 19th century. In 1873, the U.S. government granted a patent to Levi Strauss for what would become the company’s 501 jeans, based on its rivet-reinforced fastenings. Jeans were practical, tough work pants, the kind that could take a beating when you were out in the field. By the early 20th century, though, they had become a fashion statement, fit for the kind of people who had never even set foot on a working ranch.

http://fortune.com/2015/05/21/levi-strauss-anniversary/

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Worlds oldest pairs of Levi's Jeans (1879) were found in a Silver mine 136 years later. (see above images)

SAN FRANCISCO — The oldest pair of blue jeans in the Levi's archive are kept in a fire-proof safe to which only two people know the combination. They are wide and durable enough to wear over long johns while out harvesting timber or mining silver in 1879, the year they were produced. Back then, the relic went by a different, old-timey name: waist overalls, to contrast with competitors' popular bib overalls.

The marketing slogan for the pants at the time: "For men who toil."

One of the two people who has unfettered access to the 136-year-old pair is Tracey Panek, the Levi Strauss & Co. historian.

"I like to think of them as the very first early sustainable garment ... you could wear them out, you could pass them on, you could patch them up," she said in a tour of the Levi's archives in February. They were first made for men who worked in mines, cowboys and farmers, and developed in parallel with the history of the American West, before going global.

"They were built to last," so they tell us volumes about our pioneering predecessors who wore them.

These waist overalls were called the XX, for the material produced at the Amoskeag Denim Mill in New Hampshire. They only had one pocket in the back, as well as three in the front, including the little one, likely used for a pocket watch. (The fifth pocket wouldn't be added to the back until 1901.)

By 1890, they would become the 501 that Levi's still sells today, and the basics would remain, with a few exceptions.

There are no belt loops on the XX — just a few buttons around the waist to attach suspenders, the preferred method of keeping pants up in the late 19th century, and a cinch in the back for adjustable size. Based on the wear patterns at the knees, Levi's archivists have concluded that at least three people wore the pair. (Another archival pair from 1879, which has one leg cut off, presumably for patching purposes, appears below, with standard cinch in view.)


The cinch, which would remain on the waist of Levi's jeans until World War II, when materials had to be conserved.

During the 1850s, a tailor named Jacob Davis came up with a design detail that revolutionized the apparel industry. By reinforcing blue jeans with metal rivets at their most vulnerable points, he invented a pair of trousers miners could depend on through years of washing and wearing. Jacob would later partner with his cloth supplier Levi Strauss to bring the idea mainstream.

But there’s one place you won’t find the rivets that stud most blue jeans: the crotch. According to this video from TED-Ed tracing the history of blue jeans, rivets originally had a place at the base of the fly. Strauss and Davis reportedly decided to nix the crotch rivet following complaints from miners who discovered the painful effect it produced when squatting above a campfire sans-underpants. So if your crotch seam is always the first to split open, you have Gold Rush-era miners to blame.


http://mashable.com/2015/03/17/oldest-levis-blue-jeans/#d56PZXVFFmqB

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100-year-old Levi's jeans 'found in goldmine' put up for sale on eBay. (see above images)

A pair of 100-year-old Levi's jeans that lay undiscovered in a California goldmine have been put up for sale on eBay. (30 Jul 2008)

The trousers are covered in wax drops from a candle carried by their original owner to light the mine but are generally in “excellent condition”, the seller claims. The vintage blue jeans are size 34 waist and 33 leg, according to the attached "Levi Strauss & Co" label.

The colour has partially faded on the seat and on the front of the legs, causing them to resemble to fashionable “worn” look of many modern jeans. They were found next to a paper bag bearing the name of a local shop frequented by miners which stopped trading in 1898, the seller claims. Levi Strauss, a German-born clothing manufacturer, established the firm that bears his name in San Francisco in 1853. His denim jeans were tremendously popular with California miners because their tough fabric did not split or wear as easily as other materials.

The jeans, which the seller claims were discovered by neighbour while exploring the Rand mining district in the Mojave Desert, have not been authenticated by Levi’s. But the seller - who has a 100 per cent rating from other eBay users which is usually considered evidence of an honest trader - says that the successful bidder can return the jeans for a full refund within seven days, if they wish to get them checked by an expert.

Bidding for the jeans had reached $17,600 (£9,000) by 2.30pm BST, with less than five hours until the auction deadline.

Gold mining blossomed in the Rand area – which contains the towns of Randsburg, Johannesburg and Red Mountain – in the mid 1890s, and continues to this day. Silver and tungsten were also discovered in the area in the early 20th century.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/2474759/100-year-old-Levis-jeans-found-in-goldmine-put-up-for-sale-on-eBay.html

CAPTION READS:

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HOMER CAMPELL'S JEANS, 1917

"Miners were notoriously hard on their pants, and Homer Campbell was no exception. This Hard Rock Miner worked the gritty landscape outside Wickenburg, Arizona in the early 20th Century.  he bought a pair of 501 Jeans there in 1917, padded the pants with scraps of denim for extra protection, and then send them back to Levi Strauss & Co in 1920, saying that they hadn't held up.  Homer received a new paid or 501 jeans, and his old pair were put on display.  In 2003 archives staff examined this intriguing garment and determined that underneath the ratty patching was a perfectly sound pair of 501 jeans, now almost a century old."

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Those Jeans are now 100 years old today... and Homer worked in a goldmine - close to the Vulture Gold Mine in Wickenburg, Arizona (USA).