Levi’s History and Trivia | Brand History and Trivia
Levi’s History: Levi Strauss & Co.: Levi Strauss & Co. is an American clothing company known worldwide for its Levi’s brand of denim jeans.
Headquarters: San Francisco, California, U.S.
Levi’s History Tagline:
- Go Forth.
- A style for every story.
- Have you ever had a bad time in Levi’s®?
- Quality never goes out of style.
- The Uniform of Progress.
- Levis. Original jeans. Original people.
- Our models can beat up their models.
- Dangerously low.
- Free to Move.
- Red Tab®: On 4 Life.
- Fit to die for.
- Opt for the original.
- Originals stand the test of time.
- The Original 501® button fly. Seen in all the wrong places.
- Levi’s® Wide Leg Jeans. It’s Wide Open.
- Levi’s® Youthwear. Good Morning World.
- Levi’s® Jeans that helped build America.
- Shrink to fit.
- Live Unbuttoned.
Levi’s History Founders: Levi Strauss
Logo:
- The “Arcuate”, the double arch stitching on the back pocket, is a Levi’s trademark, which the company has repeatedly defended in court.
- In 1886 the “Two Horse Brand” leather tag, showing a team of horses trying to pull apart a pair of pants, began to be sewn into the back of the company’s “waist-high overalls,” the term Levi Strauss preferred to “jeans.”
- In 1890 the firm assigned its first lot numbers to its products, and the famous number “501” was assigned to the riveted pants.
- The red tab attached to the left rear pocket was created in 1936 as a means of identifying Levi’s jeans at a distance.
Levi’s History:
It was founded in 1853 when Levi Strauss came from Buttenheim, Franconia, (Kingdom of Bavaria) to San Francisco, California to open a west coast branch of his brothers’ New York dry goods business. In 1873 Levi Strauss and tailor Jacob Davis received a U.S. Patent to make the first riveted men’s work pants out of denim: the first blue jeans. The company briefly experimented (in the 1970s) with a public stock listing, but remains owned and controlled by descendants and relatives of Levi Strauss’s four nephews.
Brand Ambassadors:
- Bruce Willis
- Stanley Tucci
- Jason Alexander
- Brad Pitt
- Jennifer Love Hewitt
- Nick Kamen
- Imran Khan
- Deepika Padukone
- Sushmitha Sen
- Priyanka Chopra
- Naima Mclean
- Akshay Kumar
- Shahid Kapoor
- Kangana Ranaut
- Christina Aguilera
- Mariah Carey
- Ben Folds Five
- The White Stripes
- Bipasha Basu
Levi’s History Trivia:
- In World War II, blue jeans were declared an essential commodity and were sold only to people engaged in defense work.
- At the age of 18, Strauss, his mother and two sisters sailed for the United States to join his brothers Jonas and Louis, who had begun a wholesale dry goods business in New York City called J. Strauss Brother & Co.
- Jacob Davis, a Jewish emigrant from Latvia, was a tailor who frequently purchased bolts of cloth made from hemp from Levi Strauss & Co.’s wholesale house. After one of Davis’ customers kept purchasing cloth to reinforce torn pants, he had an idea to use copper rivets to reinforce the points of strain, such as on the pocket corners and at the base of the button fly. Davis did not have the required money to purchase a patent, so he wrote to Strauss suggesting that they go into business together. After Levi accepted Jacob’s offer, on May 20, 1873, the two men received U.S. Patent 139,121 from the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
- The patented rivet was later incorporated into the company’s jean design and advertisements. Contrary to an advertising campaign suggesting that Levi Strauss sold his first jeans to gold miners during the California Gold Rush (which peaked in 1849), the manufacturing of denim overalls only began in the 1870s.
- The company then created their first pair of Levis 501 Jeans in the 1890’s, a style that went on to become the world’s best selling item of clothing.
- The “Arcuate”, the double arch stitching on the back pocket, is a Levi’s trademark, which the company has repeatedly defended in court. During World War II it was deemed by the US Government to be decorative only, so the Arcuate was hand-painted onto the pockets.
- Contributing to the change in the lifestyle of the people of Braddock, Pennsylvania, a town whose growth reversed with the decline of the steel industry, the Levi’s brand is committed to funding the refurbishment of Braddock’s community center, a focal point of the town and their youth-based programming. Additionally, Levi’s is supporting Braddock’s urban farm which supplies produce to local area residents at reduced costs.
- Signature by Levi Strauss & Co.was a range of high-quality, affordable fashionable jeans and casualwear for the whole family.
- May 20, 1873 is now considered the official birthday of “blue jeans.”
- The two-horse brand design was first used in 1886.
- The red tab attached to the left rear pocket was created in 1936 as a means of identifying Levi’s jeans at a distance.
Video: Levi’s “Fit to die for.” advertisement campaign run with Deepika Padukone.