Levi Strauss Biography

Clothing manufacturer, born in Bavaria, Germany. He went to New York City in 1847 and worked as a pedlar before moving to San Francisco (1850) when gold was discovered in California. He began to sell cloth and soon opened a dry goods store with supplies shipped in by his brothers in New York. When miners wanted a sturdy pair of trousers, he tried making them out of tent canvas, and then shifted to a cotton imported from France, serge de Nimes, which was known in America as ‘denim’. Dyed indigo blue and with copper rivets at the stress points, these trousers soon became known as ‘Levi's’ and were soon adopted as the work trousers for many in the West. From there they spread throughout the USA and eventually throughout the world. A bachelor, Strauss turned the business over to two nephews, and one passed it on to his son-in-law, Walter Haas Sr, in whose family it largely remained throughout the 20th-c.