I am wearing a pair of blue jeans today that are very faded and one knee is becoming quite frayed. In other words, they are on the verge of becoming fashionable, all I would have to do is rip that knee open. If I donate them to a thrift store, perhaps someone will do something like this with them.

The condition of my jeans led to a discussion in our home about the vagaries of fashion. Young people today wouldn’t be caught dead wearing patched jeans, but it is cool to wear tattered jeans. (Is it still cool to say cool? I’m too old to comprehend the latest fashions, in words as well as clothes.)

Jeans, by the way, were not invented by Levi Strauss. He was an enterprising young man who heard of the California gold rush, thought those men sluicing for gold would surely need tents, and headed west with a wagon load of canvas. When he arrived he found that what the men really wanted was pants that would not wer out in a few days.

Levi Strauss was from Europe and knew about the style of working man’s pants sold in markets all over Europe. The were made in small shops in the city of Genova in Italy. Genova is called Genoa in English and Gênes in French, and the pants were known as the pantalons de Gênes. So Levi Strauss used his wagon load of canvas to make pantalons de Gênes. The gold miners in California pronounced Gênes as jeans.

The miners loved the jeans that Levi Strauss made for them, but wished they could be made of a material not quite so heavy and stiff as canvas. So Levi Strauss ordered a shipment of the blue twill cloth made at Nîmes in France, l’étoffe bleu de Nîmes, which soon became known in California as blue denim.

Levi Strauss made his fortune from blue denim jeans, but they were a style of pants that originated in Italy, using a fabric made in France, The only unique feature added by Levi Strauss was the rivets on the corners of the pockets, a suggestion of one of the miners who was frustrated with the pockets tearing off his jeans.

Levi’s jeans started out as a practical solution to a workplace problem. I wonder what he would think of the situation today when jeans are more highly prized when they are faded and tattered than when they are new?