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Top denim find from a faded past | News.com.au
IT'S the eBay bargain with a $45,000 price tag.
Put up for auction after being found in a Nevada mining town, these battered Levi's were overlooked as a fashion treasure and sold as just another dusty relic of America's wild west.
But to the brand's historian Lynn Downey, who bought the vintage denim - dating back to the 1870s - the "find" was like striking gold.
Regarded as the oldest pair of blue jeans in the world, handling the precious pants in Sydney yesterday was a white-glove experience.
With designer denim labels now a dime a dozen, Ms Downey remains riveted by the past, sourcing for the Levi Strauss archives in San Francisco. So serious is security the company's collection is kept in combination-lock safes.
The trade in vintage jeans has become big business, especially in Japan, with online auction sites and flea markets the best place to find originals.
Australia's ties to the label began in 1918 when the patent was registered here, but it is believed the first pair was sold in the 1930s. Tracking denim's history is like tracing a cultural revolution, Ms Downey said - a symbol of Western wealth and more recently, rock star chic.
"Every generation changes denim to what they need. To me going to college in the '60s, wearing jeans was 'woo hoo' ... I was a liberated woman. For the young women in our design team, you can wear denim everywhere from your wedding to a nightclub."
Denim is again a hot style option this summer - from Daisy Duke cut-offs to double denim layering.
Flicking through the pages of a 1935 edition of Vogue magazine, which first documented "Lady Levis" in a feature about "dude ranching", the guide to wearing denim then is the same as wearing denim today: "Turned up at the bottom once, laundered before wearing, cut straight and tight fitting, worn low on the hips."
The Levi's collection will go on display in Melbourne later this week.
IT'S the eBay bargain with a $45,000 price tag.
Put up for auction after being found in a Nevada mining town, these battered Levi's were overlooked as a fashion treasure and sold as just another dusty relic of America's wild west.
But to the brand's historian Lynn Downey, who bought the vintage denim - dating back to the 1870s - the "find" was like striking gold.
Regarded as the oldest pair of blue jeans in the world, handling the precious pants in Sydney yesterday was a white-glove experience.
With designer denim labels now a dime a dozen, Ms Downey remains riveted by the past, sourcing for the Levi Strauss archives in San Francisco. So serious is security the company's collection is kept in combination-lock safes.
The trade in vintage jeans has become big business, especially in Japan, with online auction sites and flea markets the best place to find originals.
Australia's ties to the label began in 1918 when the patent was registered here, but it is believed the first pair was sold in the 1930s. Tracking denim's history is like tracing a cultural revolution, Ms Downey said - a symbol of Western wealth and more recently, rock star chic.
"Every generation changes denim to what they need. To me going to college in the '60s, wearing jeans was 'woo hoo' ... I was a liberated woman. For the young women in our design team, you can wear denim everywhere from your wedding to a nightclub."
Denim is again a hot style option this summer - from Daisy Duke cut-offs to double denim layering.
Flicking through the pages of a 1935 edition of Vogue magazine, which first documented "Lady Levis" in a feature about "dude ranching", the guide to wearing denim then is the same as wearing denim today: "Turned up at the bottom once, laundered before wearing, cut straight and tight fitting, worn low on the hips."
The Levi's collection will go on display in Melbourne later this week.
