Quote Originally Posted by Canuck
My understanding is that hemp is a material that hardly wears out. The first Levis jeans were made of hemp but it cost the company money as the jeans never wore out.
Not to change the subject, but since you brought it up, the first Levi's were made in San Francisco during the gold rush (early 1850's) and primarily sold to miners in the gold camps.

They were made from stolen ship sail fabric (called "coarse cotton drilling" at that time) taken from the many ships anchored in the San Francisco harbor. The first ones were dyed a variety of colors to help conceal dirt and disguise their origin. The indigo blue ones were most popular and the dye was very cheap, so that is why Strauss stuck with blue.

Their major sales point was that they were nearly indestructable. If some ship sails were made of hemp in the early 1850's, then that is what some Levi's were made of.. I guess that is possible. I had never heard that claim before. I have seen a pair of original/antique Levi's jeans from the 1860's (when they actually had to start breaking down and buying their fabric) and they appeared to be cotton denim to me.

This information is based upon newspaper articles from the time, letters Strauss wrote to his family in the East, police reports regarding the theft of sails from ships and documented orders for new sails that were purchased from the East to replace stolen ones.