THE EVOLUTION OF JEANS

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Henry David Lee was another kind of merchant. He started out in Ohio selling kerosene and moved west to Salina, Kansas, with a small bundle of venture capital. The H.D. Lee Mercantile Company sold fancy canned goods and offered a line of Eastern work clothes. When shortages and shipping didn't suit Henry David, he set up his own garment works, producing overalls, jackets and dungarees. Dungarees refer specifically to cotton drill pants without bib fronts, and generally to the rough blue cotton cloth named for the dyer's section of Bombay— Dungri —where it originated. Lee's chauffeur probably came up with the Lee Union-All, a denim coverall that became the uniform of mechanics and other workers in grimy environments. Later, it evolved into the flight suit.

In the 1920s, about the time Lee was introducing the first zipper fly, Levi Strauss was deleting the crotch rivet. Chafed horsemen had pressed the company for years to remove it, but it took a fly-fishing trip by the chairman of the board to do so. As he crouched near a campfire listening to a story, that central copper rivet heated up nicely. The chairman bolted upright—and the rivet went. Later, with the universal acceptance of jeans, the back-pocket rivets that scratched school desks, dining room chairs, saddles and car fenders became extinct.

Jeans do more than cover your body. They hold you. They support and comfort, they remind you that you are girded for the struggle. Putting on jeans makes a rough morning easier.

They take your measure and keep your faith. Jeans mold to you and become yours alone. If you eat too much, they tell you, Hey, back away from the trough, Hoss, you're straining the measure. Their blue color, in all its variations, suits any kind of day. They look fine over Bally loafers or Chippewa workboots, under a Redskins sweatshirt or a Harris Tweed jacket. They are easy, unstrained, unpretentious. They are egalitarian; it is a severe test of Thomas Jefferson and not of jeans that I cannot picture that gentleman farmer in a pair of Levi's.

Between Lee Riders and Levi's you must make your own choice. (Land's End, L.L. Bean and others are a mail-order alternative.) All are sturdy and authentic. Lee claims a better-designed crotch. Good. Levi's are undoubtedly the original. Good. Lee pays great attention to women's fit and makes six grades of embrace from baggy to epidermal. Good. I would no more suggest a preference in this matter than I would suggest whether you wear boxers or briefs.

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