There’s vintage. Then there’s the 9Rivet, jeans so old that Levi’s isn’t exactly sure how long ago they came out. Estimates put it sometime in the early 1870s. The kicker? More than 150 years later, you can actually buy your very own pair.
Levi’s Vintage Clothing 9Rivet
Levi’sLevi’s Vintage Clothing 9Rivet
The name of the 9Rivet alludes to the jean’s signature trait — it has just nine rivets instead of the usual 11 you’d find on most other jeans. The original 9Rivet pair resides in the Levi’s archives in San Francisco. The pair of riveted duck waist overalls, which were used to help date the 9Rivet jeans, resides in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. (donated by Levi Strauss & Co. when the museum opened in 1964).
Now, the 9Rivet is back for a limited time as part of the Levi’s Vintage Clothing catalog. Tracey Panek, Levi’s in-house historian, and LVC’s design director Paul O’Neill worked together to reproduce the original garment stitch for stitch with nine-ounce Plain Selvedge Cone Mills White Oak Denim.
“Of the various 1870s blue jeans in the Levi’s Archives, I always suspected 9Rivet was the oldest,” O’Neill said in a press release. “After confirming it was in fact the oldest we have, we were thrilled to reproduce all of its quirks and details that collectively capture a unique piece of denim history.”
