In 1852 Levi Strauss, an immigrant from Bavaria, opened a haberdashery business in San Francisco, at the height of the California Gold Rush. His day-to-day business enabled him to identify a need among local workers: garments that could withstand anything. Together with tailor Jacob Davis he had the intuition to combine copper rivet reinforcements and an extremely tough fabric, denim: thus in 1873 the first work suit to the waist was born. Today we call that garment "blue jeans."
