Laser-Worn Levi's Are the Start of Something Big

The jeans are brand new and uniformly dark blue. To eyes accustomed to fashionably distressed denim, they look stiff and cheap, like off-brand items from a 1970s discount store. Then a technician mounts the legs on V-shaped supports, taps a few touchscreen menus, and hits a button. A laser begins working its way down the pants, trailing a puff of blue smoke. In less than a minute the too-blue fabric has taken on the whiskered and faded look of well-worn jeans, broken-in and beloved. It’s high-tech magic.

Levi Strauss drew great press attention for its plans to completely replace hand labor with lasers to distress its jeans. The announcement marks yet another step in the computer-driven transformation of apparel manufacturing from a labor-intensive industry to a capital-intensive one.