Levi's

   , JEANS

   Levi Strauss (1829-1902) emigrated from Bavaria and became a dry goods salesman in New York City. During the California Gold Rush, Levi, then twenty-four, headed West with a load of canvas that he intended to make into tents for the prospectors. But in San Francisco, where he landed from his clipper ship, he learned that the greatest need of the men was for pants. And so he used his canvas to make pants. When his canvas ran out, he switched to denim, adding blue coloring. He then founded the Levi Strauss Company to manufacture these sturdy, close-fitting pants. Called Levi's by the miners, they were an immediate success because the strain points were reinforced with copper rivets, making them especially useful to miners and others who filled their pockets with ore samples.

   The generic term for these denim pants, blue jeans, actually came after the specific brand. Though the pants themselves have a distinctly American origin, the word jeans derives from Italy. The manufacture of denims (denim comes from the phrase serge de Nimes, after the city of Nimes) into garments, primarily pants, took place in Italian Genoa, which in Middle English was jine or Gene from the French Genes. Hence the ubiquitous uniform of today is called in English jeans or blue jeans. Levis has also become a synonym for jeans or denims.

   The Levi Strauss clothing company today is one of the world's largest clothing company dealers, with sales exceeding $2 billion annually.