ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, December 3, 1995 TAG: 9512010066
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: G-4 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NEW YORK
SOURCE: JUDIE GLAVE ASSOCIATED PRESS
They have been called an ``American icon'' by a curator from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. From Pittsburgh, Pa., to remote Pitcairn Island, the name is legendary.
Marilyn Monroe lifted weights in hers. Elvis, Bing Crosby, Andy Warhol and the entire Woodstock generation wouldn't be caught without them.
What are they? Jeans. Levi jeans to be exact. And ``This is a Pair of Levi's Jeans,'' is a new book detailing the rich history of the granddaddy of all denim.
Put together by Levi Strauss & Co. historian Lynn Downey, with help from colleagues Jill Novack Lynch and Kathleen McDonough, the coffee table book - big enough to be a coffee table in most urban apartments - is filled with slick, color photos and fold-out pages revealing letters from famous and ordinary folk around the globe, all heaping praise on Levi jeans.
Culled from the company archives in San Francisco, the book is being sold at Original Levi's stores for $50. It includes large glossy photographs of movie stars like a Levi-clad, bench-pressing Monroe, James Dean, Robert Redford, Elvis, and letters that will make readers laugh and cry.
``Levi jeans are the consummate American icon,'' Richard Martin, curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute, wrote in the book's forward. ``No flag, no costume, no pageant has ever more embodied a nation, and its ambitions and social idealism.''
Founded by Bavarian-born immigrant Levi Strauss in 1853, Levi Strauss & Co. is one of the world's largest clothing manufacturers, claiming to have sold an estimated 2.5 billion pairs of jeans since its inception.
The jeans began as functional work clothes for miners, segued into Western ranch clothes in the 20's and 30's and by the 1960s became the emblem of youth. One of the company's biggest booms came after World War II when American GIs introduced Levi's to the world.
Downey said the company knew its reputation was growing after it received a letter in 1951 from Warren Clive Christian - descendant of ``Bounty'' mutineer Fletcher Christian - from remote Pitcairn Island in the Pacific Ocean. He heard about the jeans and asked for a catalog.
Now run by Strauss' great, great grandnephew, Robert Haas, Levi Strauss & Co. has always been what Downey called ``a user-friendly company.''
``People feel like it's almost a member of their own family,'' Downey said during a recent publicity swing through New York. ``I can't tell you how many people call up and ask for photos of Levi Strauss because their child is doing a book report. Do you think they do that to General Motors?''
The company has kept every letter sent to it dating back to 1930 - archival material from the 19th century was destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. The company also kept copies of its replies.
``Every person who sends us a letter, gets a reply,'' she said.
Even young Robert Bruce Thompson, of Oakland, Calif., who, in the early 1960s, had this suggestion:
``I think zipers shoud be down and closed. because when it is up and closed. it falls down a lot. can you do it for me.'' (sic)
The book also includes a 1958 letter from Cary Grant, thanking the company for sending him four new shirts but the swank star said he could not wear them. The bold, plaid-shirts had gold-thread and gold piping on the yoke.
``I'm not at all sure if I could swagger out in gold-threaded finery,'' Grant said. ``I shall await a braver mood.'' He apparently never mustered the courage, Downey said.
There are also classic letters from ordinary folk, like the woman who said her son's Levi jeans saved him from being burned when he set himself afire while playing with matches.
Doctors said if the pants had been polyester - it was the '70s and the age of polyester - his pants would have melted onto his legs. Along with the letter, the mother sent the pint-sized scorched jeans, which are kept in the company archives, Downey said.
There's also a 1974 letter from a Michigan construction worker who said his Levi's shirt saved his life when he fell from a steel girder and was left dangling three stories on a beam by his shirt, which had split up to the armhole but held all 210 pounds of him. The shirt, too, is part of the company collection.
The oldest pair of jeans in the archives dates back to around 1890 and is the only example of 19th century jeans they have, Downey said. They were found in an abandoned silver mine in the Mojave desert by a woman hiker in 1948.
Though they had two big holes in the seat, the woman took them home, patched them and wore them for a few years before offering them to the company. She received $25 and four new pairs of Levis.
``One can only hope the miner who left them behind had another pair to wear out of the mine,'' Downey said.
But of all the letters in the book, a 1969 testimonial to the company's Sta-Prest pants - slacks with a permanent crease - is without a doubt the strangest.
Robert Helmey, of Savannah, Ga., wrote he put on his pair of Sta-Prest slacks the morning of Jan. 11 and went to work. In what he described as ``a situation beyond my control,'' he wound up in Havana, Cuba and spent the next 109 days in solitary confinement.
Throughout it all, his Sta-Prest pants stayed pressed. He thanked the company for its fine product, signed his name and then described himself further with this postscript:
``P.S. The first commercial air line hi-jacker to be returned for trial and found innocent because of temporary insanity.''
LENGTH: Long : 104 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. Lynn Downey displays a replica of a Levi's shirtby CNBmade for actor Cary Grant and a replica of a Levi's jacket made for
singer Bing Crosby at the Original Levi's Store in New York. Levi
jeans have been called an American icon by a curator at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art.