Jeans

Before the patent, the term blue jeans had long been used for workwear of heavy blue denim, including trousers, overalls and coats. Jacob W. Davis added copper pocket rivets in 1871, and he and Levi Strauss patented them on May 20, 1873. The trousers were originally designed as attire for manual workers such as miners, and rivets were added to strengthen pocket seams. From the 1960s onwards, jeans became common among various youth subcultures.

Fabric called jean emerged in the city of Genoa, Italy, in the 16th century, followed by Nîmes, France, in the 17th century. The word jeans comes from Gênes, the French word for Genoa. Denim originated as a contraction of the French phrase sergé de Nîmes, and denim, as it is recognised today, was first produced in Nîmes, France.

Denim is a sturdy, warp-faced cotton textile in which the weft passes under two or more warp threads. The most common type of denim is indigo denim, in which the warp threads are dyed while the weft threads are left white. Jeans made from indigo denim are thus predominantly white on the inside.

Indigo dye is an organic compound with a distinctive blue color. Denim was originally dyed with indigo dye extracted from plants, often from the genus Indigofera. Natural indigo dye is obtained from the leaves of some plants of the Indigofera genus, in particular Indigofera tinctoria. The leaves are soaked in water and fermented to convert the glycoside indican naturally present in the plant to the blue dye indigotin. Most denim today is dyed with synthetic indigo dye. On average, a pair of blue jeans requires 3-12 grams of indigo dye. Indigo does not dissolve in water, so it must first be chemically reduced to become soluble before dyeing. Nearly all indigo came from plantations in India until synthesis methods developed in Germany in 1878 replaced it.

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