Two Levi’s jeans from the 1880s sold for $87,400 at auction in a small town in New Mexico. The garments had been found five years ago in an abandoned mine.
Kyle Hautner and Zip Stevenson were the pants buyers. The former paid the lion’s share, 90%, while the latter, who has run a denim repair shop in Los Angeles for nearly 30 years, paid the other 10%, one of the highest amounts spent on jeans.
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News of the jeans’ discovery reached Zip Stevenson five years ago, as soon as they were found in the American West by Michael Harris, a “jeans archaeologist”, who had searched at least 50 other abandoned mines, without finding a single one. equal quality pair.
The few pieces similar to the latest discovery are kept in museums and are not used due to the delicacy of the material. The auction was held on the outskirts of the small town of Aztec, at the Durango Vintage Festivus.
Despite being an icon in the American West, jeans also bear witness to a dark episode in the history of the United States. In an inside pocket is written the phrase “The only kind made by white work”. A Levi’s spokesperson explained that the company used this slogan after the introduction of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, which barred Chinese workers from entering US soil. Levi’s reportedly abandoned this policy and slogan in the 1890s. The act was repealed in 1943.
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