By Pia Sarkar, the San Francisco Chronicle
Lynn Downey lives for yesterday.
As the historian for Levi Strauss & Co. in San Francisco, she has spent 17 years retracing the company's past, which dates to 1853, when Bavarian immigrant Levi Strauss opened a wholesale dry-goods business, selling merchandise to general stores throughout the West.
It has been Downey's job to chronicle how the company got from there to here over 153 years. At Levi's, she oversees a vast collection of records, in the form of clothing, photographs, oral history tapes or letters from customers.
The archives, open to company employees only, are lined with large filing cabinets containing old retail catalogs and company newsletters, as well the rare signature of Strauss himself, countersigned on the back of a check. There are posters of past Levi's advertisements and the cover of Bruce Springsteen's album "Born in the U.S.A.," in which the singer wears a pair of Levi's.
"Anything we did yesterday is history," Downey said. "We archive our history. We archive everything we can get."
Levi's archives were created in 1989 at the behest of Bob Haas, the company's chairman and great-great-grandnephew of Levi Strauss. Downey started with 200 pieces of clothing when she came on board. Today, the archives house more than 5,000 pieces of clothing, 400 linear feet of documents, 750 linear feet of marketing materials, 4,500 photographs, 500 posters and 300 artifacts.
Quake ruined headquarters
About 10 percent of the collection is from the late 19th century, "and I'm grateful for every piece," Downey said. Like most archives, Levi's has a substantial backlog of items that have not yet been cataloged.
But the backlog does not include much of the company's materials before the 1906 earthquake, which destroyed Levi's headquarters on Battery Street in the Financial District. All the records stored in the building since 1866 burned in fires that followed the earthquake, save a handful of ledgers that some employees threw into a vault before they fled.
Gone are the documents that would have revealed the evolution of the world's original blue jeans, which Strauss patented with business partner Jacob Davis in 1872. Although Downey has reams of information on the years after the earthquake, she still laments what she cannot have.
"There is so much of our company we'll never know because it was all lost," she said. "I've been trying 17 years to fill those blanks."
The archives are a testament to Downey's efforts. In the main reading room is a blue fireproof vault the size of a large refrigerator. Within it, tucked neatly into a drawer, is the world's oldest and most expensive pair of jeans, valued at $125,000. The "XX," one-pocket jeans, which date back to 1879, are carefully wrapped in white cloth.
Downey bought the jeans, made of indigo, three years ago from a dealer, paying $40,000 for them. "It was a dream come true," she said. "I'd gone 15 years never finding a pair older than 1890."
The vault also contains other pairs of 501 jeans from the late 19th century and early 20th century, with hints of their unfaded color preserved inside the pockets. Some jeans contain remnants of the past, including candle wax drippings caked into the denim from years predating electricity.
Both Downey and archivist Stacia Fink, who has worked for the company eight years, handle the clothing with gloves to keep body oils or lotions from getting on the material.
Unlikely finds 
Downey is particularly pleased with one pair of 1880s jeans she acquired. In May 2001, someone wanted to sell the jeans on eBay. A representative from the Butterfield Auction House stopped by Levi's archives to have them authenticated.
"As soon as the person left, I ran to my colleagues and said, 'We have to buy these off eBay,' " Downey recalled. Sure enough, she logged onto her computer later that night and found herself in a bidding war. Final price for the jeans: $46,532.
For the most part, Levi's leaves it to Downey to decide which acquisitions to make and how much to pay for them within her allotted budget for the year. "If I feel I'm being charged a lot because I'm Levi's, I'll walk away from it," she said. "But if I see something I think has value, I need to make a business case to buy a high-value item."
Not all companies have archives, and some are more formally organized than others. The Society of American Archivists maintains a directory of 300 to 500 companies with archives. Elizabeth Adkins, director of Ford Motor Co.'s archives and president-elect of the Society of American Archivists, said that some will establish an in-house collection for legal reasons, as well as for public relations and marketing purposes. Others will do it to track the progress of their business over time.
"It helps them to know what's been tried before, what the brand's historic strengths are and how to build on it," Adkins said.
Haas, who served as Levi's chief executive officer from 1984 until 1999, established the archives after international managers convinced him the historical material would be good for marketing.
Vaulted vintage
The archives are not open to the public for proprietary reasons. However, pieces of the collection are on display in the lobby of the company's headquarters on Battery Street, including letters written by customers over the years. Employees, many of whom are designers, are welcome to view the archives and comb through the collection for creative inspiration.
Downey, 51, seems to be in a perpetually good mood and takes her job seriously. She keeps her eyes peeled at all times for potential acquisitions and encourages other employees to do the same. Even when on vacation, she is always looking. "I just think about my job wherever I go," said Downey, who scavenges for everything from the obvious to the obscure.
On this particular day, Downey is dressed in a vintage Levi's chambray shirt from the 1970s that she bought on eBay. "I wear something vintage every day, even if it's just jewelry," she said.
As she offered a tour of the archives, she quickly shut the door to what she jokingly referred to as the "meat locker," where most of Levi's vintage clothing is kept. The room is cooled to 65 degrees to protect the fabrics.
"You can't go in there," she said, hiding the mess like a self-conscious host. "It's awful!" 
Downey is more than willing, however, to pull out the clothes stored inside, even if they include some of Levi's fashion flops. "I don't believe in sugarcoating history," she said. "Your failures and successes add up to who you are."
Among Levi's failures are "spikes," cotton pants that the company designed in 1958 in the colors of lime, orange and lemon Jell-O. Each pair was accompanied by a corresponding package of Jell-O, a gimmick that did not win over very many customers.
Downey held up pairs of orange and lemon spikes and laughed. "I wish I had lime," she said.
Never-ending puzzle
For as extensive as Levi's collection is, it is not possible to have it all. Fink said that some sellers demand more than what an item is worth. "They just aren't realistic," she said.
"Our collection is pretty complete, so we'd have to find something extraordinary if it's on the high end," Downey added. "I've been buying vintage denim for 17 years. There's not much left out there."
But even after 17 years, Downey still holds out for the extraordinary and says that each day carries that potential. "I always say my job is like a surprise party every day because you never know what the next phone call will bring," she said.
E-mail Pia Sarkar at psarkar@sfchronicle.com.
