first stop the desert cabalero museum searching for corroborating evidence she asks wienberg native Dana Burton his opinion Dana I brought this pair of pants from the Levis archives that I'd like you to look at they belonged to Homer Campbell Homer Campbell and he bought these pants here in Wickenberg in 1917 at the Brighton commercial Co we don't know what he did for a living and he did something amazing to these pants Dana reads the clues if he was a cowboy he'd have worn him out on the sides and he probably wouldn't wear them out anyway
cuz he's wearing the shaps but a minor he's padding himself so that when he's chopping rocks out of the cliff they come down and hit against him they'll bounce off and when he's picking up big rocks to carry him out they'll have some padding against those pants I'd say for sure that uh Mr Campbell was a minor this deduction makes perfect sense Homer placed patches where he needed to store his tools and to protect himself from the heavy work of mining Lynn is thrilled another mystery solved it's like closing a loop it's like finding the
final piece of a puzzle finding out who done it only in this case I found out who wore it coming up next Lynn's Quest continues hoping to learn how Levis becomes sewn up with another American Icon Cowboys it's just a fact cowboys wear blue jeans but our historian sees these buckaroos and dungar as a mystery the case of How the West Was worn Lind Downey is Levi straussen company's historian her Mission answering how these all American icons became roped together she checks the evidence these 501 genes from 1933 these very distinctive whiskering kinds of looks
are what you get again when you're sitting in a saddle for days and days on end and also when you don't wash your jeans that often as well and maybe the only water you're exposed to is some rain or some you know river water going through the river on your horse but this is so specific to the kind of wear that you'd see on cowboy jeans it's the early 20th century country and western radio stations ride the American Airwaves Will Rogers ropes his way into popular culture and cowboy becomes as much a lifestyle as a
profession Levis catches on Blue Jeans didn't always dominate western style in the early 20th century the cattle drive has a different look they mostly wore Woolen trousers even earlier than the Cowboys some of the frontiersmen um wore Buck skan pants Cowboys testify that blue jeans are comfortable yet tough enough for a rough ride wearing shaps is a chore so it's really nice if you can have a good tough pair of Levis real cowboys wear their jeans in a particular way we didn't have pre-shrunk materials in those days so you'd roll up the cuffs and I'd
use those for an ash train it was also a handy place to keep a package of cigarettes when you're riding so that you can reach it without digging into your pockets Cowboy Tales are the stuff of Legend and the stuff television ads are later made of like this letter from Mrs MH English of Auto Wyoming in 1942 we found a man who had run off the highway and was stuck we hoped to get him back onto the road but had no chains or rope to pull him with finally we found a pair of old Levi
Strauss and tied one leg to our car and one to the front of [Music] [Applause] his those types of tales make easterner fascination with the coke grow City Slickers visit dude ranches spreading the gospel of Levi far beyond the 11 western states where the genes are available [Music] when guests arrive at the ramuda Dude Ranch in Arizona Dana Burton's family takes them shopping when the guests would come in they were never properly attired for riding and stuff in the desert so we would get them in Bron's commercial and the other stores in town and make
sure they had Levis and proper shirts and boots and hats and all the gear that they needed to ride in the desert Levi wholesale cataloges encourage stores to carry their brand while other brands go directly to Consumers wherever you were in America you wanted that cowboy look and you'd buy it from SE Rook or a range of catalogs meanwhile Hollywood lassos Cowboys and blue jeans together the Studios California base so close to Levi headquarters makes them the blue jean brand of the movie really that's what helped Levis in particular spread outside of the West Coast
even stars like John Wayne Swagger in Levis John Wayne was one of the first big Cowboy Heroes that you really could see by his appearance that he was a real cowboy since the Duke jeans tightly fit the movie Cowboys image but Levi's hit a snag when films mov to color the blue of the Levis just jumped out and the color Consultants they would die when they would see the rushes and see the and they chew us out for putting Levis on because that color is brutal so we had to overd strip strip the color out
of them overdye them and and do it that way and that helped by 1936 Levis needs to stand out from the crowd competitors copied its riveted stress points its back pocket stick Ing and it's tough as Nails fabric so Levis adds its now famous red tab Levis needed something that made them look different and they came up with the idea of a little red tag on the back pocket with Levi spell in white and might not seem a very big deal but every practically every day Levis has people who are trying to imitate it for
some the red tab makes Levis Levis it was sticking a claim saying that this is really our product and one could easily tell that this was an authentic Levi product from across a crowded room by virtue of that tab starting in 1971 the red tab changes the E becomes lower case it becomes the dividing line in the Vintage Clothing World Big E means vintage little e does not making bigie pieces highly collectible even Western Wear expert and author Holly waren wants Linn Downey's trained eye to peek at a piece she found what I was calling
you hello hi what have you brought for me today I found this shirt and um just wondering if I was wondering what year it's from it's got the capital e oh the label and I thought this is kind of interesting cuz it's got this denim family I've never seen that before in any denim family was a line that debuted in 1953 oh really and I believe that's when this particular style of shirt debuted it's called a Sawtooth wow this is quite a collectible shirt it's an extremely collectible shirt I have seen these shirts go for
$1,000 on eBay Kidd wow how much did you pay for it can I ask you 25 cents at a yard sale in Nashville Tennessee oh my God it was just wonderful to see the look on her face um and know that it's still out there those pieces are still out there coming up next Lynn's Quest continues why did life during wartime change blue jeans and and how did life after wartime take Levis in a new [Music] direction oh my goodness how amazing is this it is the world's largest scavenger hunt oh here is in The
Quest To Find Levi's place in history this is p [Music] dirt 62 pieces of evidence important vintage clothing and advertising paraphernalia are sold to Levi straussen company shirts coats and pants some dating back to the 19th century bear witness to the Levis icon this is what we came here for to Levis historians Lind donney and stasa fin it's thrilling this purchase is a major acquisition increasing their chances of answering how Levis became an icon oh these are beautiful look at the denim look at the denim on this look at the perfect wear pattern it's beautiful
beautiful if we were to buy these many pieces individually as they showed up in the world it would probably be 10 15 maybe even 20 years worth of collecting but we're able to compress time all at once and have all these pieces come to us all at once ooh look stasa a one pocket a one pocket 2011 look at that unbelievable so where would you put that age wise so it's 1890 to 1901 wow look at the AR it's perfect it is there are about 23 or 24 pieces we are acquiring today that we have
never seen before we don't have in the company archives at all and this is a Priceless treasure for us to have
