Levi's Reveals Original Use For The Tiny Pocket On Your Jeans

If you’ve ever found yourself desperately trying to prize a stuck coin out of that tiny pocket on your jeans and ended up wondering what they’re actually for, we have your answer! 

We can confirm that they certainly weren’t designed for coins, in fact, dating back to 1890 when they were first stitched into Levi's 'waist overall' jeans and were intended to be used for pocket watches! 

They appear on the design in the patent Strauss and J.W. Davis received for ‘Improvement in Fastening Pocket Openings,’ on May 20th, 1873, and were first put into mass use in 1890 with the ‘Lot 501’ jeans, the model for Levis 501 jeans today.

Speaking to Insider, Levi Strauss & Co's very own historian, Tracey Panek said: "The watch pocket was a feature of our first waist overalls. The oldest pair of waist overalls in the Levi Strauss & Co. Archives [from 1879] includes the watch pocket.”

So, why does the pocket not appear on other types of trousers? 

Well, it’s because suits were so commonly worn back then - and suit jackets already have pockets for watches - so it would’ve made the one on the trousers superfluous. Levi Strauss himself, for example, kept a pocket watch in the vest of his business suit, according to Panek.

With the design of the jeans remaining largely unchanged since the 19th century, the watch pocket has remained in place, says Panek. 

“[It] was an original element of our blue jeans, like the rivets on our pockets, button fly, arched back pocket stitching and leather patch.

“To preserve the integrity of the early design, Levi Strauss & Co. maintains the watch pocket.”

Having said that, there was one period in which it the design was changed… Panek explained: "One interesting fact about the watch pocket is that during WWII the two corner rivets were removed as a way to conserve metal for the war effort."

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"The rivets returned to the watch pocket after the war. It was riveted in the top two corners and included our recognisable arch design, called the Arcuate, stitched with a single needle sewing machine.

On the Levi's website, she wrote: "This cinch-free blue jean with the uniform look of the Arcuate, a contrast to previous years when the single-needle application made each Arcuate design unique, was the blue jean of the future and you can still see it in our 501 jeans more than 70 years later.

"Levi’s emerged from World War II as fresh, modern and uniformly manufactured.

"And with a distribution that now spanned oceans, it was well on its way to becoming the world’s ubiquitous global garment that it is today."