A 24-year-old German immigrant named Levi Strauss departed from New York with little supply of dry materials. He also had the intention of opening an extension of his brother's New York business that he was bringing to San Francisco. Strauss did not want to be a prospector, so he decided he would make enough money by selling supplies to the miners. First, Strauss sold cloth, textiles, and sewing supplies to the miners, but he didn't earn much profit by doing that. Then he heard the miners complaining about how easily they ripped their pants, so Strauss decided to use some of his heavy canvas fabric to make the miners pants to wear. The first jeans were made of a material called ‘duck’, but this fabric was not particularly comfortable. Then Strauss made the jeans using fabric called denim. Denim is a tough, cotton fabric which is made by passing under two or more threads. This fabric made jeans much more popular for everyone to wear, not just workers. In 1873, Jacob Davis wrote him a letter saying that he could make durable pockets with metal rivets for the pants. But Davis didn't have enough money to share his idea, so he offered to give his idea to Strauss if Strauss agreed to pay his patent. Strauss agreed, and from then on blue jeans had metal rivet pockets. Then the idea for jeans was to dye them with indigo, to make jeans blue. After that, blue jeans were considered perfect.
Blue jeans changed the style of dressing later in history. After they were invented, blue jeans were typically only used for protection. But soon after Strauss changed the fabric to denim, they became comfortable and stylish. American’s then thought of new ideas for jeans, and the styles changed to all different kinds of jeans like skinny jeans,