Levi's

Levi Strauss showed up in San Francisco in 1853 during the Gold Rush, selling dry goods, not pants. The jeans came from a Reno tailor named Jacob Davis, who kept blowing out the pockets on miners' work pants and started reinforcing the corners with copper rivets. He needed a business partner to patent the idea. He wrote to Strauss, who supplied denim to Davis's shop, and the two patented riveted work pants together in 1873. That patent date is the real birthday of the blue jean.

They weren't called jeans at first. The original name was "waist overalls," and they were workwear, full stop: built for miners, ranchers, and railroad crews who needed pants that wouldn't rip apart. The Red Tab, now one of the most recognized brand marks on earth, wasn't added until 1936, purely so cowboys could spot a genuine pair of Levi's from horseback at a distance.

The 501 didn't become a fashion statement until decades after it became a workwear standard. It took Hollywood, then the 1950s youth-rebellion look, then multiple waves of vintage revival, to turn a rivet patent into a permanent fixture of American style.

Vintage Levi's is one of the deepest rabbit holes in resale. Selvedge edges, redline stitching, tab font, the arcuate stitch pattern on the back pockets. All of it dates a pair, and all of it matters to the people who know what they're looking at.

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