With the current tech boom, it’s easy to get excited about all the inventions sprouting up right here in the city. Despite the newness of it all, San Francisco has always been a hotbed of innovation, from that famous gold frenzy to today. Here are some things you should be thanking SF for:
Jeans
This is a more well-known San Francisco invention, as any native will proudly tell you that you're wearing jeans because Jacob Davis and Levi Strauss invented them. Created to provide clothing for gold-rush miners that wouldn’t fall apart after strenuous wear, and patented in 1873, copper-riveted jeans proved to be the biggest mainstay in the fashion world. Available in every color under the sun and in a variety prints, finishes and washes, and worn by billions of people in the world, jeans aren’t going anywhere—and to think that they were born right here in SF.
The Gap
While we’re on the topic of Levi’s, the Gap started out as a store on Ocean Avenue selling Levi’s jeans and records in 1969. After realizing that finding a good pair of jeans in San Francisco was quite the task, Donald Fisher (who had an odd-numbered inseam—hence the jean troubles) and Doris Fisher opened a store where young customers could find good denim and good jams. The store’s name came from the “generation gap” between teens and parents. The Gap grew to the giant it is today and acquired various brands, including Banana Republic and Intermix, in the process. So really, you should be thanking San Francisco for denim again and for some of the basics you grew up wearing.
Photo courtesy of Fashionably Yours.
Victoria’s Secret
There was a time when a guy buying lingerie for his wife or girlfriend at a department store was seen as kinda creepy. The options were better suited to dowdy ladies, and it was an uncomfortable experience for guys—and for female salespeople. Roy Raymond experienced and understood this predicament and opened the first Victoria’s Secret store in 1977 for men who felt embarrassed about buying women’s unmentionables. Founded in San Francisco, the first store was at the Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto. Victoria’s Secret proved to be the perfect middle ground between boring staples that were offered at the time and other extremes, such as racy offerings from places like Frederick’s of Hollywood. Like the Gap and Levi’s, Victoria’s Secret is now a billion-dollar business and an integral part of American fashion.
Hippie Wear
Hippie, boho, boho chic, gypset—we’ve heard these words a thousand times, especially around music-festival season. Although the beatniks of Greenwich Village in New York City can be viewed as the original hippies, New Yorkers as well as pretty much everyone else started moving to San Francisco to be a part of the new hippie movement. The beats in San Francisco, who called North Beach home in the late 1950s, had already moved to Haight-Ashbury, and by the Summer of Love in 1967, San Francisco was the world center of everything hippie. Flowers in your hair? Scott McKenzie said you should wear them if you’re going to San Francisco. As for fringe vests, flared jeans, peasant tops and all those other Bohemian trends that have been big in 2015? San Francisco hippies wore them first. Peace, love and you’re welcome.
Photo courtesy of Jim Marshall.
Fashion and Tech Everything
San Francisco is a flourishing hub for technology and start-ups, and thankfully a lot of that innovation and growth is being used in the name of fashion. New shopping apps and websites are sprouting up left and right, promising to make buying clothing easier, more fun and more efficient. Well-known companies that started in San Francisco include Threadflip, where you can buy and sell gently used clothing; the Real Real, where you can buy and sell slightly used luxury goods; Stitch Fix, where stylists will put together shipments of items according to your style; and Style Lend, a site that allows you to rent clothing from another person’s closet.
