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Levi's 501
Levi's XX waist overalls, 1873
The starting point for everything else here. Reno tailor Jacob Davis came up with copper rivets at the pocket corners, he and Levi Strauss applied for the patent together, and it was granted on May 20, 1873. The first waist overalls had one back pocket with the Arcuate stitching, a watch pocket, a cinch, suspender buttons and a rivet in the crotch, cut from 9-ounce XX denim made at the Amoskeag mill in New Hampshire. The lot number 501 arrived around 1890, a second back pocket around 1901 and belt loops in 1922, so pockets and loops alone go a long way toward sorting the earliest survivors.
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Lee 101
Lee 101 Cowboy Pants, mid-1920s
Lee's answer to the riveted overall was a heavy 13-ounce jean built for riders and sold under lot number 101. Its lasting contribution is the zip fly: the 101Z, usually dated to 1926, is widely credited as the first jean with a zipper, nearly three decades before Levi's offered a zippered 501 for East Coast buyers in 1954. That head start is why a zip fly on an old Western jean does not automatically make it a late pair. James Dean's taste for 101Z Riders later carried the name well beyond the rodeo.
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Lady Levi's 701
Lady Levi's, Lot 701, 1934
The first jeans Levi Strauss & Co. cut specifically for women, arriving when women were still expected to wear skirts and dresses. They were aimed at visitors to Western dude ranches, made of pre-shrunk denim with a fit drawn for women, and kept the button fly of the men's overalls. The company did not expand the line nationally until after World War II, which makes an original 701 a scarce early proof that jeans could be more than men's workwear. Its own lot number is the point: this was a separate pattern, not a smaller 501.
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Levi's 501
Levi's 501XX, the post-war pattern of about 1947
The version that settled the 501's details, and the one where dating clues pile up. Back-pocket rivets had been hidden under the pockets since 1937 after complaints about scratched saddles and furniture, and wartime rules had stripped the cinch and some rivets. After the war the cinch was gone for good, the watch-pocket rivets came back and the Arcuate was sewn on a double-needle machine, giving it a uniform diamond where the lines meet. Later changes help place a pair: the zippered 501Z of 1954, bar tacks replacing the hidden rivets in 1966, and the "Big E" Tab giving way to a small e in 1971.
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Wrangler 13MWZ Cowboy Cut
Wrangler 13MWZ Cowboy Cut, 1947
Built for rodeo riders rather than miners, and the details show it. Blue Bell, the company behind Wrangler, developed it with the Philadelphia tailor Rodeo Ben: flat copper rivets that would not rub a saddle, a higher back rise so a rider was not sitting on his wallet, double-needle felled seams and a zip fly from the start. The number refers to its 13-ounce denim. Its broken twill, woven to stop the legs twisting as much in the wash, became a Wrangler signature, though accounts differ on whether it arrived at launch or in 1964. The 13MWZ is still sold today as Wrangler's Cowboy Cut Original Fit.
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Levi's 606 Super Slims
Levi's 606 Super Slims, 1965 to 1972
The narrow, low-rise jean Levi's made for the youth and college buyers it was chasing in the 1960s. It began in the fall 1965 catalog as Lot 351, a "Super Slim, trim, masculine fit" in preshrunk heavyweight denim, gained "low rise styling" the next spring and became Lot 606 that fall. A black Tab with orange lettering set it apart from the red-Tab 501, which is the first thing to check on a suspected original. Super Slims left the range in 1972, but Levi's Vintage Clothing has since reissued the 606, so a crisp pair may be a modern copy rather than a find.
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Levi's 505
Levi's 505, 1967
The preshrunk, zip-fly alternative to the 501 that rock and punk adopted as a uniform. Launched in 1967, it spared buyers the shrinking ritual of raw denim and the button fly in one go, and its advertising was where Levi's swapped the word "overalls" for "jeans." Levi Strauss & Co. ties it to the cover of the Rolling Stones' Sticky Fingers and to the Ramones' look on their first album. For anyone who wants the straight Levi's leg without a shrink-to-fit gamble, it is the model to look for, and it is still made today.
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Levi Strauss & Co.
Levi's 517 Boot Cut, 1969
The jean that made room for boots without going all the way to a flare. Levi's introduced it in fall 1969 alongside the 646, as part of its experimental orange Tab line, and its catalogs described the Sta-Prest Saddleman 517 as "full from the knee for the boot wearer." Made at first in wrinkle-resistant Sta-Prest fabric, it gave Western and work wearers a leg that sat cleanly over a boot shaft. The bell bottom came and went, but the 517 is still in the range, which makes it the reference point for the bootcuts that followed.
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Levi's 646 Bell Bottoms
Levi's 646 Bell Bottoms, 1969
Levi's turning a homemade trend into a product. Young buyers had been customizing their own jeans into flares, and by fall 1969 the company answered with the 646, first called "Nuvo Flares" and made of a poly-cotton blend, sold in the orange Tab line meant for fashion styles rather than basics. Levi's jeans soared in popularity in the early 1970s on the back of these fuller fits, and the 646 is the factory flare that defined the shape. Check the Tab: a factory 646 carries the orange Tab and a flare cut in from the start, which sets it apart from the many 501s that were split and widened by hand.
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Gloria Vanderbilt
Born
Gloria Vanderbilt jeans by Murjani, 1976
The jeans that put a designer's name on the back pocket and turned denim into a status label. Vanderbilt teamed up with the manufacturer Mohan Murjani to launch the line in 1976, with her name embroidered on the back pocket and a white swan on the coin pocket. Pitched as jeans designed to fit a woman rather than adapted from men's workwear, the line passed $200 million in sales at its 1980 peak. The Murjani Group calls them the first designer jeans, and the name-on-the-pocket idea became the template the designer-jeans boom followed.
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G-Star Elwood
G-Star Elwood, 1996
The jean that took the five-pocket pattern apart and rebuilt it around a bent knee. G-Star's head designer Pierre Morisset drew on weathered motorcycle pants, and the Elwood became the first model of the brand's 3D denim, shaped to follow the leg rather than hang straight from the hip. Pockets sewn at 45 degrees, diagonal seams across the thighs, knee pads, heel guards and a saddle patch make one easy to spot on a rack. In G-Star's telling it went on to become one of the best-selling jeans in denim history, and it is the model to study for how far construction can move from the 501 and still read as jeans.
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