{"id":8790,"date":"2011-08-10T13:51:33","date_gmt":"2011-08-10T13:51:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fadingad.com\/fadingadblog\/?p=8790"},"modified":"2011-08-10T13:51:33","modified_gmt":"2011-08-10T13:51:33","slug":"boss-of-the-road-overalls-workshirts-your-moneys-worth-you-know-it-kevin-langley-sf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fadingad.com\/fadingadblog\/2011\/08\/10\/boss-of-the-road-overalls-workshirts-your-moneys-worth-you-know-it-kevin-langley-sf\/","title":{"rendered":"Boss of the Road – Overalls & Workshirts – Your Money’s Worth You Know It! – Kevin Langley, SF"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u00a9 Kevin Langley<\/p><\/div>\n

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\u00a9 Kevin Langley<\/p><\/div>\n

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\u00a9 Kevin Langley<\/p><\/div>\n

\"\"

\u00a9 Kevin Langley<\/p><\/div>\n

\"\"

\u00a9 Kevin Langley<\/p><\/div>\n

\u00a0\u00a0San Francisco — There are often complaints about stubborn<\/em>
\n preservationists who want to save every ramshackle building and battered<\/em>
\n historical artifact. (And yes, I’m often among the complainers.) But every<\/em>
\n once in a while they have a point.<\/em>
\n \u00a0\u00a0Monday’s discovery of an old sign, circa 1921, advertising “Boss of the<\/em>
\n Road” overalls on a wall in the Bayview, rated a note in the paper. But it<\/em>
\n also marks the beginning of a San Francisco story that became an<\/em>
\n international phenomenon.<\/em>
\n \u00a0\u00a0When the paint went on that wall, Boss of the Road was only one of several<\/em>
\n burgeoning work clothing companies looking to serve a market of laborers.<\/em>
\n One competitor was Levi Strauss & Co., which was promoting its innovation<\/em>
\n in denim pants – rivets to anchor the seams.<\/em>
\n \u00a0\u00a0An ad from the July 24, 1898, issue of The Chronicle touts the company’s<\/em>
\n “copper riveted overalls” and “spring bottom pants.” (The spring bottom<\/em>
\n apparently didn’t take off, although it sounds intriguing.) Levi’s claims<\/em>
\n those rivet-studded pants, created in 1873, were the world’s first blue<\/em>
\n jeans.<\/em>
\n \u00a0\u00a0Lynn Downey, historian for Levi’s, says there was a good reason for that<\/em>
\n ferocious bulldog on the Boss of the Road ads. It was for the same reason<\/em>
\n that the Levi’s logo featured a pair of jeans in the middle of a<\/em>
\n tug-of-war between two powerful horses.<\/em>
\n \u00a0\u00a0“At that time, not everyone spoke English,” Downey said. “So you ended up<\/em>
\n navigating through symbols. The reason you made your logo look so rough<\/em>
\n and tough is to demonstrate how tough the product is.”<\/em>
\n \u00a0\u00a0I got in touch with Downey to get a little background on Boss of the Road,<\/em>
\n but when you’ve been a denim historian for 22 years, the stories pour out.<\/em>
\n Eventually, Downey made an offer I couldn’t refuse, a chance to see the<\/em>
\n oldest pair of jeans in the world.<\/em>
\n \u00a0\u00a0The Levi’s building, just off the Embarcadero, has a nice little museum<\/em>
\n that is open to the public. But don’t look for the world’s oldest jeans<\/em>
\n there. They are kept behind a locked door in a fireproof vault.<\/em>
\n \u00a0\u00a0“And I have a Bowie knife at my desk,” Downey warned.<\/em>
\n \u00a0\u00a0No wonder, the pants – which frankly don’t look much worse for wear than<\/em>
\n what I wore in college – are valued at $150,000. It turns out there’s a<\/em>
\n large and thriving vintage denim market. True “denim heads” search old<\/em>
\n buildings for old jeans that they can sell to someone like Downey.<\/em>
\n \u00a0\u00a0In this case, the jeans were acquired from a dealer who knew he had a<\/em>
\n vintage item, but didn’t know how vintage.<\/em>
\n \u00a0\u00a0“He didn’t know he had the oldest jeans in the world and we didn’t tell<\/em>
\n him,” said Downey, who was able to date the pants by the style of rivet<\/em>
\n and the type of leather patch on the belt line. “The jeans were made<\/em>
\n between 1873 and 1890.”<\/em>
\n \u00a0\u00a0Downey says Boss of the Road went out of business around World War II,<\/em>
\n which was a shame because jeans were about to enter their golden age. It<\/em>
\n was partly triggered, oddly enough, by the market in Japan.<\/em>
\n \u00a0\u00a0“Young Japanese men with lots of discretionary income went through World<\/em>
\n War II seeing American servicemen with jeans, bomber jackets and Zippo<\/em>
\n lighters,” she said. “They wanted those for themselves.”<\/em>
\n \u00a0\u00a0Speculators from Japan came to the United States and bought up jeans in<\/em>
\n bulk, driving up demand. That coincided with a youth boom in jeans, which<\/em>
\n eventually made them so mainstream that versions now sell for hundreds of<\/em>
\n dollars.<\/em>
\n \u00a0\u00a0And the old jeans are more popular than ever. Among the Levi’s collection,<\/em>
\n valued at over half a million dollars, is a pair of jeans from the 1880s.<\/em>
\n \u00a0\u00a0“We won them on eBay for $46,532,” Downey said. “And I know for a fact<\/em>
\n that I outbid Ralph Lauren, who is a big denim fan.”<\/em>
\n \u00a0\u00a0There you have it. From the world’s oldest copper-riveted overalls to the<\/em>
\n most famous pants in the world. And it all began about the time that<\/em>
\n fading sign was painted on the wall. C.W. Nevius’ column appears on<\/em>
\n Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

E-mail him at cwnevius@sfchronicle.com.<\/em>
\n Copyright 2011 SF Chronicle<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0San 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. \u00a0\u00a0Monday’s discovery of an old sign, circa 1921, advertising “Boss of the Road” overalls on a wall […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[344,690,1334],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-clothing-retail","category-guest-contributor","category-san-francisco-ca"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pXBbJ-2hM","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fadingad.com\/fadingadblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fadingad.com\/fadingadblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fadingad.com\/fadingadblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fadingad.com\/fadingadblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fadingad.com\/fadingadblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8790"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fadingad.com\/fadingadblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8790\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fadingad.com\/fadingadblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fadingad.com\/fadingadblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fadingad.com\/fadingadblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}