Levi Strauss founded his dry goods company in 1853, after
moving to San Francisco from Bavaria. His business became as much a part of San
Francisco's hagiography as sourdough bread, cable cars and the 49ers - miners
and team.
Upon his death in 1902, bequests from Strauss benefited
the Bay Area, serving children and the poor. The company factory built at 250
Valencia St. after the 1906 earthquake and fire is now the San Francisco
Friends School. As a testament to the company's progressive bona fides (including
a GLAAD award for a Gay History Month ad campaign, "Gay History Is:
American History"), conservative radio host Glenn Beck in 2011 called on
his fans to boycott the company "for using ... progressivism to sell their
products."
Levi's survived and earlier this month opened a new
flagship store with a tailoring shop on Market Street, which takes all those
San Francisco notions and adds to them. The new store is smaller than Levi's
former digs on Union Square, 7,000 square feet of selling space versus 11,000,
but with 100 more jobs, according to Lance Relicke, Levi's global vice
president, implementation and brand presentation. He said the company is also
experimenting with increasing its percentage of U.S.-made items.
The location - at the intersection of Market and Stockton
streets - is covered by 17,000 pedestrians per hour. The company's Commuter
line of clothes for cyclists gets prominent display, as do its Wasteless jeans,
each made with an average of eight plastic bottles.
And the company, which sells clothes with Care for Our
Planet hangtags exhorting wearers to wash garments less often, in cool water,
line-dry them and recycle by donating to Goodwill, opted for streamlined
sustainable interior design.
Levi's began with construction: 79 percent of demolition
and construction waste was diverted from landfill and recycled, according to
Kelly Moss, a company spokeswoman. The 22,000-square-foot space, a third of
which is selling area, is LEED Gold certified. The company figures it will
consume 25 to 30 percent less energy than the industry norm for a space its
size. Water use is also lower than industry standard, by 40 percent. Ninety
percent of equipment in the store is energy efficient.
The wooden walls came from recycled sidings of barns
within 30 miles of San Francisco, Relicke said, adding that other wooden
fittings come from recycled chunks of the city's piers. Hand-painted murals of
San Francisco neighborhoods, including the Castro, Haight-Ashbury and the
Mission, line the fitting rooms.
Indeed, Levi's is doing everything it can to give a local
feel to the store, and failing that, to place it within a cool, hip and green
aesthetic that suggests shoppers from fanatical "denim heads" to
Dockers dads belong to a demographic bound by something greater than a few ZIP
codes on a bay might suggest.
In one display, the company traces its history with a
display of hanging jeans, each pair showing style changes in basic 501s. There
are boiler suits and a $489 pair of overalls that, if belted, would rock a pair
of sky-high Louboutins, and if not, look dandy while under a vintage VW Bug.
There are special things, too: The exquisite silver
jewelry is by Harvey Mace and Jeannette Dale, American Indians from New Mexico.
The candles by Le Feu de L'eau are inspired by "the late '60s fantasy
candle," much as many San Francisco tourists are inspired by a fantasy of
the late '60s.
The trucker jackets are by denim collector Erik Schrader,
of Boise, Idaho, who uses an antique chain-stitch embroidery sewing machine to create
designs of "graphic fonts, interstate icons and big color."
Read more:
