Unit 2: Clothing - Read

Read the following passage and choose the best answers. BLUE JEANS. Levi Strauss, a young …(1)… from Germany, arrived in San Francisco in 1850. California was in the middle of the Gold Rush, thousand of men were coming to California to dig for gold. And Levi Strauss came to sell canvas to these …(2)… . Canvas is heavy fabric. So Levi Strauss thought the miners could use the canvas for tents. One day Strauss heard a miner …(3)… that he couldn’t find clothes …(4)… for the work he was doing. Strauss got an idea. He quickly took some of his canvas and made it …(5)… pants. These are pants were …(6)… the miners needed. In one day, Strauss sold all the pants he had made. Strauss wanted to improve his pants. He wanted to make them event better. He bought a fabric that was softer than canvas but just as strong. This fabric came from Nimes, a city in France, and was called serge de Nimes. The miners liked this fabric. They called it “denime” (from de Nimes) and bought even more pants from Strauss. However, denim had …(7)…. Because of this the denim pants did not look interesting and they got dirty easily. To solve these problems, Strauss made the denim blue. Strauss continued to improve his jeans. Today, the company he started is known around the world and jeans are considered not just practical but very fashionable as well.