Still sexy after all those years?

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In the Old West, on May 20, 1873, a deal was struck between tailor Jacob Davis and cloth manufacturer Levi Strauss. It was a deal that would make history, as the two patented jeans with their signature copper rivets to reinforce points of strain. Selling them to tough gold miners, cowboys, and lumberjacks, they could never have imagined that their patent would be embraced by so many subcultures years later — greasers, rockers, and hippies, just to name a few.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Levi’s jeans had in fact become so popular that even major car manufacturers decided to offer “Jeans” editions of their models, some featuring Levi’s badges on the exterior and denim-trimmed interiors. The lady above is pictured with an AMC Gremlin, but there was also a VW Beetle as well as a Jeep CJ-7 — and you may know of more. More recently, Ferrari hotshot and male fashionista Lapo Elkann had the interior of his Ferrari 599 GTB retrimmed in denim, and his marque now even sells its own line of jeans (starting at $145). One wonders what the lumberjacks and cowboys would think of it.

Words Jeroen Booij, picture AMC Public Relations

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