Do you know where blue jeans are from? It is said that gold miners in the california Gold Rush used to get a lot of holes in their pants. In the 1850s, Levi strauss, from germany, solved their problem. He used tent material to make extrastrong pants. In this way, the 24-year old businessman also made his fortune. "Jeans" was thename of the strong cotton fabric Straus used which came from Italy and the French called it “ genes” after the name of that city. Today the fabric is called denim and the pants are called jeans.