Veda #21 : It's Just (Not) An Ordinary Pocket

Day 21
Question by : Me - "Why did my jeans always have a little "second-pocket" in the right pocket?"


Pay an attention to your jeans, the right pocket. In those pocket you'll see a second little pocket inside it. At a glance, it was no more than just an accesory or an accentuation, or maybe every jeans has it. But actually there is a history behind it. So tonight, we're gonna reveal why they had this little pocket inside every trousers that popularized by Levi Strauss on 1880.

As one kind of textiles, jans was originated from Genoa, Italy, on 1560. This kind of textiles usually wore by Navy. The French called this trousers with "bleu de Génes", means Genoa's blue. Although its origin was from Europe, but as a fashion item, jeans was popularized by Levi Strauss, 20 year old male that moved to San Fransisco as clothes merchant, at 1880. That time, the gold fever was a great issue on US soil.

However, when he was still at California, his goods were sold out, except one canvas tent. He then cut this tent and make several trousers that later he sold it to gold miners. And unexpectedly, this workers loves this trousers because this kind of trousers are highly durable and didn't rip easily. Levi then takes this opportunity to imported more garments from Genoa, called "Genes" and he changed the name into "Jeans".
Those workers loves Levi's jeans and made it as an official trousers for gold miner, and they even made their own name "Levi's Jeans" and this was the first Jeans brand name in the world that later changed into "Levi's 501"


Now, back to the pocket issue.
This jeans prototype was actually made for the gold miners. It has 5 pockets, 2 at the back, 2 at the front, and 1 little pocket on the front right pocket. This wasn't an accessory, but it was really designed for the gold miner to store their small gold pieces when they found it.
Nowadays, Jeans has produced with so many brand name, and apparently, this little pocket become a standard issue for every jeans. Of course, it isn't meant to store the gold pieces... :)