© Kevin Langley
© Kevin Langley
© Kevin Langley
© Kevin Langley
© Kevin Langley
San Francisco — There are often complaints about stubborn
preservationists who want to save every ramshackle building and battered
historical artifact. (And yes, I’m often among the complainers.) But every
once in a while they have a point.
Monday’s discovery of an old sign, circa 1921, advertising “Boss of the
Road” overalls on a wall in the Bayview, rated a note in the paper. But it
also marks the beginning of a San Francisco story that became an
international phenomenon.
When the paint went on that wall, Boss of the Road was only one of several
burgeoning work clothing companies looking to serve a market of laborers.
One competitor was Levi Strauss & Co., which was promoting its innovation
in denim pants – rivets to anchor the seams.
An ad from the July 24, 1898, issue of The Chronicle touts the company’s
“copper riveted overalls” and “spring bottom pants.” (The spring bottom
apparently didn’t take off, although it sounds intriguing.) Levi’s claims
those rivet-studded pants, created in 1873, were the world’s first blue
jeans.
Lynn Downey, historian for Levi’s, says there was a good reason for that
ferocious bulldog on the Boss of the Road ads. It was for the same reason
that the Levi’s logo featured a pair of jeans in the middle of a
tug-of-war between two powerful horses.
“At that time, not everyone spoke English,” Downey said. “So you ended up
navigating through symbols. The reason you made your logo look so rough
and tough is to demonstrate how tough the product is.”
I got in touch with Downey to get a little background on Boss of the Road,
but when you’ve been a denim historian for 22 years, the stories pour out.
Eventually, Downey made an offer I couldn’t refuse, a chance to see the
oldest pair of jeans in the world.
The Levi’s building, just off the Embarcadero, has a nice little museum
that is open to the public. But don’t look for the world’s oldest jeans
there. They are kept behind a locked door in a fireproof vault.
“And I have a Bowie knife at my desk,” Downey warned.
No wonder, the pants – which frankly don’t look much worse for wear than
what I wore in college – are valued at $150,000. It turns out there’s a
large and thriving vintage denim market. True “denim heads” search old
buildings for old jeans that they can sell to someone like Downey.
In this case, the jeans were acquired from a dealer who knew he had a
vintage item, but didn’t know how vintage.
“He didn’t know he had the oldest jeans in the world and we didn’t tell
him,” said Downey, who was able to date the pants by the style of rivet
and the type of leather patch on the belt line. “The jeans were made
between 1873 and 1890.”
Downey says Boss of the Road went out of business around World War II,
which was a shame because jeans were about to enter their golden age. It
was partly triggered, oddly enough, by the market in Japan.
“Young Japanese men with lots of discretionary income went through World
War II seeing American servicemen with jeans, bomber jackets and Zippo
lighters,” she said. “They wanted those for themselves.”
Speculators from Japan came to the United States and bought up jeans in
bulk, driving up demand. That coincided with a youth boom in jeans, which
eventually made them so mainstream that versions now sell for hundreds of
dollars.
And the old jeans are more popular than ever. Among the Levi’s collection,
valued at over half a million dollars, is a pair of jeans from the 1880s.
“We won them on eBay for $46,532,” Downey said. “And I know for a fact
that I outbid Ralph Lauren, who is a big denim fan.”
There you have it. From the world’s oldest copper-riveted overalls to the
most famous pants in the world. And it all began about the time that
fading sign was painted on the wall. C.W. Nevius’ column appears on
Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.
E-mail him at cwnevius@sfchronicle.com.
Copyright 2011 SF Chronicle
