Today, February 26, is the 195th birthday of Levi Strauss, and I thought it would be fitting to devote my blog to the great man.

In 2016 I published the biography, Levi Strauss: The Man Who Gave Blue Jeans to the World, based on my nearly 25 years of research into his life. There are so many stories to tell about him, but today I’m going to share how I tussled with my publisher about how to use Levi’s name.

When I wrote the manuscript I referred to him as “Levi.” That’s what everybody at the company always called him, and I did the same in all my other writings. But one day I got an email from the editor at the university press that was publishing the book. He said the standard format for writing biographies was to refer to the subject by his or her last name. So, he proposed that all of the references to “Levi” in the manuscript be changed to “Strauss.”

Nope.

I told him this would be contrary to Levi Strauss & Co. company tradition and historically inaccurate. Then I told him a story.

In 1888 Levi was friends with an embroidery and lace merchant named Henry Lash. Levi let his friend come into the office on Battery Street to check the credit ratings of mutual customers. Lash sometimes sent his 18-year-old son Samuel to do the work, and he was always in awe of the famous Levi Strauss. Years later he told his own son Henry about these visits and how impressed he was that everybody in the office called him “Levi” and not “Mr. Strauss.” And as Samuel Lash once said to Henry, “I was just a kid, an office boy, but I still remember Levi Strauss as one of the finest, kindest, and friendliest gentlemen I’ve ever met.”

There it was: proof that during his own lifetime Levi Strauss’s employees called him by his first name. I told the editor I would do no less, and that changing the text to “Strauss” was a deal breaker.

I got my way.

Happy Birthday Levi!

Photos courtesy Levi Strauss & Co. Archives