The American Dream

Hardly any other item of clothing has so global a reach as blue jeans, which is constantly adapted to new fashions. Launched on the market in the 1870s as hard-wearing working trousers strengthened with rivets, they became a symbol, of youth and leisure culture, after the Second World War. Today, they are a fashionable mainstream phenomenon ranging from hip to serious. With the invention of jeans, Jacob Davis and Levi Strauss stumbled across a textile-based gold mine in 1870s San Francisco. The trousers became a global success story, and still are today. The production process, however, has become a form of global overkill, especially these days.