Those Two Lines on Your Denim Jacket: A Levi’s Denim Jacket History

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The Mystery of the Two Lines: What Are These Even For?

What’s up, nerds? It’s Michael! Welcome back to The Iron Snail. Let’s get into the mystery of the Levi’s lines. The only way to figure out why these Levi’s denim jacket lines exist is to purchase over $5,000 in vintage denim jackets.

Then, of course, we start to theorize. To get the answer, we must start at the beginning. Hey, what are these seams for? Denim jackets always have two lines on either side, but what are they for? Because I didn’t know what those were for. I do know now; otherwise, it’d be a dumb article.

Time to Get Nerdy with Some Theories

Today, we focus on Levi’s, a company that made denim jackets since the late 1800s, but these two lines and two lines on the back didn’t show up until 1962.

Levi’s made many jackets before this one, but this one was called the denim jacket to rule them all, and it is now the most popular denim jacket of all time and synonymous with the denim jacket. But it also represents Levi’s turning their back on their main customers.

Welcome to my theories.

I initially thought this was a clever way for Levi to make a ripstop denim, meaning that if a hole formed somewhere on the jacket during the workday, it wouldn’t spread, so you could get home and repair it. I also thought that maybe these two seams act as a layer of protection, so if something hits you or rubs up against you, you have an extra layer of denim that will break down first.

Say you fall off your bike, and the tear would have an extra layer of denim to go through before your skin was exposed or you got hurt in some other way.

Then, the nerdiest reasoning behind all of this would be sanforization. This process was introduced in 1928—that’s pre-shrinking garments. It didn’t really get popular in denim until the 1950s, but brands like Levi’s couldn’t sanforize heavyweight fabrics.

It had to be a certain weight, like 12 oz. So my thought was maybe they added these seams to add more rigidity and heft to the garment while still being able to sanforize it and keep it easy to produce in mass and not have the customer have to pre-shrink it.

The Big Discovery (Spoiler: It’s Lee)

I had a lot of theories because most things with Levi’s and denim have a purpose behind them because they’re workwear, and there is a purpose behind these lines. When I talked to experts who are much more in the denim trade than I am, the answer and explanation were simply: Lee denim.

Lee denim is the answer as to why the Type 3 Levi’s denim jacket and all the Type 3s after that, for many different brands, have those two lines in the front and two lines in the back. Poor Wrangler, just off in the middle of nowhere, sat this one out. Today, we’ll explore why these things exist by looking at five denim jackets that are collectively worth over $5,750, courtesy of my friend Gio at webuyoldjeans.com. Check him out!

The Real History of Levi’s: Spoiler – They Didn’t Invent Denim

Levi Strauss and Levi’s did not invent denim. That was invented/perfected in France in Nîmes, 229 years before Levi Strauss was even born. He also wasn’t the first person to put indigo on fabric—the oldest sample that we—we, as in the world, have is 6,000 years old. More likely, it was used up to 10,000 years ago, and I think it is even further back from that. Indigo is like a core thing of humanity as we know it.

What Levi Strauss did do was own a clothing brand. His family owned a clothing brand, and they were like, “Hey, America’s getting bigger; someone’s got to go to Cali and start slanging stuff out there so we can expand our business.” And Levi was like, “Yo, I’m on that Bay Area E-40 hyphy hyphy hyphy!”

One of Levi Strauss’s wholesale customers, who was buying his fabric to make garments, called up Levi on a phone that didn’t exist yet and said, “Hey Levi, this lady asked me if I can make pants for her husband, and she wanted them to be super strong and not rip. So I used a rivet.” Rivets were first used in ancient Egypt 5,000 years ago to secure handles onto clay pots.

Levi was like, “Dude, that is so sick! How can I help you?” And Jacob Davis basically said, “I need money. I can’t secure the patent for this, so can you help me since you’re loaded?” Levi Strauss said, “Yeah, also, it’s now called Levi Strauss.” That happened, and then the blue jean was basically born as we know it. Levi Strauss was setting up more and more factories, and everybody was kind of going hog wild over these super strong pants that they needed.

The Golden Era: When Everyone Wanted Levi’s

I’m going to call this the Golden Era of Levi’s. It’s like from the second they riveted their first piece of clothing to like the 1940s. Obviously, Levi’s has always been making dump trucks of money, but at this time, there were no competitors. Everybody was like, “This is amazing, this is the best!” Levi’s was flying high, and then slowly, two competitors started to creep up behind Levi’s and try to eat its lunch.

Breaking Down the Type 1: A Worker’s Best Friend

The Type 1 jacket, or the 506XX, was first released in 1905, and the one I bought is from 1947. Harry S. Truman was President, Arnold Schwarzenegger was born, and Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, and Bing Crosby were all insanely popular. This jacket was being worn when Christmas music was just being pumped out.

Anyway, I will break down what a worker in the 1940s needed from their jackets ’cause Levi’s was a workwear brand for a while.

We didn’t have bar tacks back then, so rivets were kind of the most important thing. There’s rivets on the pockets, there’s rivets on the cuffs, and there’s rivets on the back on the cinch that we’ll get into in a second. They also have a selvage line—now you see it with Japanese selvage denim a lot.

It’s a self-finishing edge, basically—you didn’t need to add stitching over the edge of denim, and it wouldn’t fray. Collectors go crazy for this; people at the time did not give two craps if it was there or not.

Only one booby pocket, which I always found very weird, especially because the triple pleat blouse had two kidney pockets, and this jacket has only one. The reasoning I read behind it was that workers at the time didn’t really need two pockets—they had belts and other pockets that took care of it, and it could snag on things while they were working. Also, most importantly for Levi’s, it was quicker to make something without a second pocket and cheaper, so they could pass on savings to the customer or keep more money for themselves—who knows what they did. Old jackets were meant to be very big ’cause they were workwear pieces, so people could cinch them tighter if they needed them to be cinched tighter.

These jackets also had very dropped shoulders—I kind of look a little slouchy in them—and they dropped the shoulder because if you’re a bigger dude that’s not taller, you need a bigger shoulder. So it’s easier to have a drop shoulder with the same length sleeve rather than make like 50 sizes for big and tall, big and short, and anything in between.

We also have pleats on the backy-wacky, so if you stretch your arms forward, the jacket opens up a bit more. And we have front pleats with a box stitch that you would slice if your stomach was getting bigger for whatever reason—maybe you’re pregnant—or if you’re wearing a lot of clothes, so that way the jacket could fit over your ginormous belly and/or flannels.

Finally, the denim direction changes from the main part of the jacket to the top shoulder parts. The top little placket has the denim going horizontally, and the denim shrinks a lot more this way. So I thought maybe it was super wide, and then when you would rinse the jacket, it would shrink to your shoulders to fit you a little bit better because these jackets were not sanforized, so they shrunk up to 10% when you put them in the wash. But I don’t know.

Either way, this is absolutely a fantastic fit—the epitome of Levi Strauss workwear brand. It could fit anyone. This is Levi’s in their Golden Era. This jacket had a 48-year run, six times longer than the next jacket. The next jacket that came out was gorgeous, and Levi’s was like, “Well, we made a big mistake. You have to scrap this right now. We need to pivot our brand”—one of the best pivots in history to make Levi’s what it is today, although that was kind of happening anyway, but still. That is the 506XX.

The Plot Thickens: Enter the Type 2

Levi’s little tiny mistake made a beautiful jacket. The patent for Levi’s riveted jeans expired in 1890, and every other brand was suddenly able to copy them. To stand out, they embroidered their back pockets and added a red tab in 1937. But even then, they had to take a more drastic measure to remain the king of denim – they introduced a new jacket. Levi drops their 507XX.

Definitely the most beautifully aged jacket that I have. There are a ton of cool, small holes in it. Obviously, these jackets start off as a very dark blue like raw denim does, and they fade and wear over time to beautiful different shades with so much character. But the question, of course, is: what exactly did they change from the Type 1 to the Type 2, and why?

First thing, Levi’s has two booby pockets now. Two boobs now instead of one! That was a big change. There are no more back cinches; they were replaced with little waist cinches at the bottom. We still have pleats conveniently located at the bottom of the jacket and the top. The arms on the 507XX Type 2 did get slimmed a lot. Some models of the jacket also got a little bit longer than the Type 1, but not by much—you’d never notice. And now we have some bar tacks instead of rivets. The Type 2 did not have a 48-year run though, like the Type 1. It was basically shot in the head in 9 years – it was born in 1953. Welcome to the world, klunk, dead gone 1962. RIP Type 2 jacket.

Identity Crisis: Workwear or Fashion?

Essentially, at this point, Levi’s was like a worldwide icon, and denim was the coolest thing that everybody was wearing because the world—well, America at least was fascinated with Westerns, Western movies, Western life, and everything like that. Hollywood had been doing Western movies for like 50, 60 years at that point. Levi’s was becoming no longer workwear but accepted by the masses, and everybody was wearing it because it had a great utilitarian purpose, it was comfortable, and it looked cool—which is happening to another brand right now. You may have heard of them; they are called Carhartt.

Levi’s was kind of the original Carhartt, where all of a sudden, the world was like, “That stuff that you’re wearing to work looks awesome. I’m going to wear it not to work and think it’s cool too!” Oh, and speaking of Carhartt, guess who popped up in 1889 and was like, “We do workwear, we don’t care if it’s denim, whatever—it just has to be tough and has to be suitable for work.” Carhartt! Carhartt’s all of a sudden a big thing, so Levi essentially had to be like, “Okay, wait a minute. So now denim is like this pop culture icon thing. Someone else is doing workwear exclusively, and there are 990,000 other denim brands. Like, what the heck should we do?”

And the Type 2, or the 507 XX, is kind of the pinnacle of Levi’s indecision on if they want to be a workwear brand or if they want to be a fashion brand. Because they keep pleats on the front and back, the jacket still has some mobility in the chest, but the arms are greatly slimmed down, so you can’t really move around for workwear. So it’s right in the middle, and sometimes right in the middle is not good because people on both sides then don’t want it.

So Levis took one last look at their 507 XX, their Type Two jacket that only had a 9-year run, and said, “We’re a fashion brand. Kill it.”

The Game-Changer: Jack Lucier and the Type 3

Enter Jack Lucier (I don’t even know how to say his last name), designer of the Levi’s Type 3 and son of Chris Lucier, who put the red tab in Levi’s in 1937. So it’s actually pretty easy to see how Levi’s kind of melted into the Type 3 from the Type 2. But after we go through what Jack Lucier may have been thinking, there is one giant detail we have to talk about. That giant detail is called Lee Denim, who kind of, you know, 15 years, 14 years before, launched a denim jacket that might look familiar.

Okay, so if you’re Jack Lucier, the 507XX is kind of the canvas that you’re working with. This is the latest jacket—how can we make it more modern, more fashionable? What can we remove? What can we add? This is your canvas. The top block that ends the pleat is very iconic, so we’ll keep that, but since we’re going for fashion and sleekness, let’s take this front pocket and move it up and hide the top pocket flap.

Pleats are not needed anymore because we’re not a workwear brand—we want to be modern. We want to be different. So let’s take the two pleats that were by the buttons, move them over a bit, and make them into seams to pay homage to pleats that are always on the jacket but also make the jacket more slimming on the front. And let’s do the same thing on the back —we’ll remove the two pleats, but we’ll make them V-shaped seams that come down to slim the body of the jacket and remove the extra fabric.

It does help to note that old jackets were advertised to be super wide in the shoulders and super narrow at the waist. During the time this jacket was designed, people really liked the very aggressive V-shape on any piece of clothing, so that’s why it’s very V-focused. Since the jacket is supposed to be slimmer and form-fitting, we can raise the shoulders a tiny bit, and we can also change the size of the collar without worrying about the implications as to what is going to happen to someone who is working with this jacket. Do they need a shorter or longer collar?

Put that all together, and the Levi’s Type 3 is born. We are paying homage to the pleats of old on the front and back. We are slimming the jacket. We’re making it more stylish, more fashionable, easier to wear – it’s everything that a fashionista could want from a jacket.

But 14 years before the Levi’s Type 3 was designed and released, Lee came out with their 101J, a jacket that is specifically meant to be slimmer, more athletic, and more in every way. All of that is to say, these are both beautiful jackets, but you could see maybe where one brand got inspiration from the other and made something.

So we have the Type 3, which is the denim jacket to rule them all, and then there is no Type 4.

The End of an Era: Star Wars Kills the Western

After a virtually 70-year streak of uninterrupted smash hit Western films, Hollywood is rocked by a little film called Star Wars, and all of a sudden, the whole world is like, “Whoa, Western culture—put a pause on it. That’s great. Click It’s done. We don’t need to advance on that anymore. We don’t need new designs.”

That’s all locked in, and these denim jackets are the pieces from that era that are iconic. Now, the culture is not around cool Western celebrities, so there doesn’t need to be an iteration of these jackets. They remain perfect and timeless.

Jacket Type Comparison

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Wrapping It Up (With a Toy Story Fun Fact)

That is about it for the Levi’s denim jacket mystery. I will see you all next time. Thank you so much. I hope you go on TheIronSnail.us (that’s right, my little website baby) and you check out The Prologue Denim Jacket, because I’m very excited about it. I like this jacket a lot, and I think you will too.

Also, a little bonus: I was researching, obviously, this topic online, and I came across a Reddit post that said—you could—there’s actually a very popular documentary about the shift from Western culture to space culture and how people got obsessed with it. The documentary is called Toy Story, and I was like, “Oh, I didn’t even think about that!”

This article was adapted from Michael Kristy’s video on The Iron Snail, with edits from FashionBeans, and was reviewed by Michael to ensure the integrity of his original content. Watch the full video here.

The Iron Snail is a men’s fashion vlog (and now article series!) starring a young man named Michael and featuring a snail no bigger than a quarter. The two are set on taking over the world of fashion by creating a clothing line to end all clothing lines. Until then, we’re here to tell you EVERYTHING you need to know about the best clothing out there, from the highest quality raw denim jeans to the warmest jackets to the sturdiest boots…the Iron Snail has got you covered.