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A Nobel Prize for Blue Jeans

Indigo plants have been used to dye fabric for thousands of years. Unlike other dyes, indigo does not end up chemically linked to textile fibers; rather, it adheres to the surface of the threads.

This allows the fibers’ white cores to show through to various degrees after abrasion. Hence that impossible-to-replicate look of perfectly worn-in jeans.

But indigo plants yield only a small amount of the dye. It’s not nearly enough to keep pace with the enormous demand that Levi Strauss unleashed when he invented blue jeans in the 1870s.

Adolf von Baeyer won the 1905 Nobel Prize for discovering a way to make blue jeans without using indigo plants.

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