Levi’s Nabs Oldest Pair of Women’s Jeans for Denim Archive

Levi Strauss & Co. has snapped up a piece of feminist history, as well as its own, buy acquiring what are likely the oldest pair of women’s jeans in existence. Bought and worn in the early Thirties by Viola Longacre, who was then studying to be a teacher at a Fresno, Calif. college and passed away in 2014 aged 100, the jeans are among Levi’s first denim offerings for women in an era when a woman in pants of any kind was atypical. “Pants for women in the Thirties were uncommon,” Tracey Panek, Levi’s resident historian, said. “Women entering the workforce who needed sturdy workwear during World War II helped change the perceptions about wearing pants.” But even with women heading in droves to take up often heavy-duty manufacturing work, pants for women were generally trousers, “no denim,” Panek said.   The culture of Fresno, part of a county still dominated by agriculture, made it a good market for women’s jeans, which would have appealed to women looking for “practicality” when much of life involved being outdoors, Panek said. The jeans were found in a 2015 estate sale and the buyer initially contacted Levi’s for an appraisal, before the denim company acquired them for an

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