Jeans zu .. .. .. Levi Strauss !! ~ reveettu !!

 

Kamal explaining ‘aappu’ – ‘reveettu’ to Prakashraj – ‘ you don’t know !! – big nail, put in .. .. nembi ellam edukka mudiyathu !!   S Shankar’s ‘Jeans’ in 1998 was touted to be the most expensive film made in Indian cinema at that time,  produced by Ashok Amritraj and Murali Manohar. The film starred Prashanth and Nassar in dual roles along with Aishwarya Rai, Raju Sundaram, Radhika, Lakshmi and others.    

Miles away, the man not so liked by media and masses, influencer Kim Jong-un is setting trends again, this time through force of law. The North Korean leader banned a range of garments, accessories, and hairstyles   Mirror UK reported, citing Yonhap News Agency. Skinny jeans, Dear Leader says, are out. As are mullets, piercings, and other signs of the “decadent” influence of capitalism.

The term jeans appears first in 1795, when a Swiss banker by the name Jean-Gabriel Eynard and his brother Jacques went to Genoa and both were soon heading a flourishing commercial concern. In 1800 Massena's troops entered the town and Jean-Gabriel was entrusted with their supply. In particular he furnished them with uniforms cut from blue cloth called "bleu de Genes" whence later derives the famous garment known worldwide as "blue jeans".  Remember that in 1977 – my maternal uncle took me to ‘Goyals’ in Mount Road (opp to AG’s office) and got me a blue-coloured ready-made pant with maroon coloured threads running over [a denim Jeans] – a pride possession of those days!

 

Traditionally, jeans were dyed to a blue color using natural indigo dye. Most denim is now dyed using synthetic indigo.   Jeans are trousers made from denim – often specific to a particular style of pants, called "blue jeans" -invented by Jacob Davis and Levi Strauss in 1873. Starting in the 1950s, jeans, originally designed for cowboys and miners,  became  extremely popular causal wear. Denim is a sturdy cotton twill textile in which the weft passes under two or more warp threads. It is a characteristic of most indigo denim that only the warp threads are dyed, whereas the weft threads remain plain white. As a result of the warp-faced twill weaving, one side of the textile then shows the blue warp threads and the other side shows the white weft threads. This is why blue jeans are white on the inside. Indigo dye is an organic compound with a distinctive blue color.  It is the indigo that gives blue to blue jeans and almost all that is dyed now is synthetic.

Jeans though a type often  "jeans" refers to a particular style of trousers, called "blue jeans", which were invented by Jacob W. Davis in partnership with Levi Strauss & Co. in 1871  and patented by Jacob W. Davis and Levi Strauss on May 20, 1873. Prior to the Levi Strauss patented trousers, the term "blue jeans" had been long in use for various garments (including trousers, overalls, and coats), constructed from blue-colored denim.

"Jean" also references a (historic) type of sturdy cloth commonly made with a cotton warp and wool weft (also known as "Virginia cloth"). Jean cloth can be entirely cotton as well, similar to denim. Originally designed for miners, modern jeans were popularized as casual wear by Marlon Brando and James Dean in their 1950s films, particularly The Wild One and Rebel Without a Cause,  leading to the fabric becoming a symbol of rebellion among teenagers, especially members of the greaser subculture. From the 1960s onwards, jeans became common among various youth subcultures and subsequently young members of the general population.   Historic brands include Levi's, Lee, and Wrangler.

Legend MS Dhoni wearing a jeans

Levi Strauss, as a young man in 1851, went from Germany to New York to join his older brothers who ran a goods store. In 1853, he moved to San Francisco to open his own dry goods business. Jacob Davis was a tailor who often bought bolts of cloth from the Levi Strauss & Co. wholesale house. In 1872, Davis wrote to Strauss asking to partner with him to patent and sell clothing reinforced with rivets. The copper rivets were to reinforce the points of stress, such as pocket corners and at the bottom of the button fly. Strauss accepted Davis's offer, and the two men received US patent No. 139,121 for an "Improvement in Fastening Pocket-Openings" on May 20, 1873.

Levi Strauss was born to an Ashkenazi Jewish family in Buttenheim on February 26, 1829, in the Franconia region of the Kingdom of Bavaria in the German Confederation.  Levi Strauss died on September 26, 1902, and was buried in   Colma, California. He left his company to his four nephews, Jacob, Sigmund, Louis, and Abraham Stern, the sons of his sister Fanny and her husband David Stern. His estate was worth about $6 million (equivalent to $177,300,000 in 2019) The Levi Strauss Foundation started with an 1897 donation to the University of California, Berkeley that provided the funds for 28 scholarships.   

A rivet is a permanent mechanical fastener. Before being installed, a rivet consists of a smooth cylindrical shaft with a head on one end. The end opposite to the head is called the tail. On installation, the rivet is placed in a punched or drilled hole, and the tail is upset, or bucked (i.e., deformed), so that it expands to about 1.5 times the original shaft diameter, holding the rivet in place. In other words, the pounding or pulling creates a new "head" on the tail end by smashing the "tail" material flatter, resulting in a rivet that is roughly a dumbbell shape. To distinguish between the two ends of the rivet, the original head is called the factory head and the deformed end is called the shop head or buck-tail. Because there is effectively a head on each end of an installed rivet, it can support tension loads. However, it is much more capable of supporting shear loads (loads perpendicular to the axis of the shaft).

Interesting !

With regards – S. Sampathkumar
23.5.2o21