Selvedge is the finished edge of a length of cloth. On old jeans you see it when the hem is turned up, as a clean white band down the inside of the outseam, often with a coloured line running through it. Sellers put it in the title because collectors look for it, and it does tell you something about a pair. It just tells you less than most listings suggest.
Shuttle looms and wide looms
A shuttle loom carries the weft yarn across the warp in a shuttle and back again, over and over, so the yarn turns at each side and seals the edge. Mills usually set white warp yarns and a single coloured one at the edge, and that's where the coloured selvedge line comes from. Heddels puts a traditional shuttle loom at about 150 picks a minute, and the cloth comes off it around 30 inches wide.
Projectile looms fire the weft across one pick at a time and cut it at the edge. Heddels says they can run at well over 1,000 picks a minute on cloth that's often twice as wide, and most denim today is woven on shuttleless looms 60 inches wide or more. The cut edges would fray, so the seams of the finished jeans are overlocked. That overlock stitch on the inside of the outseam is the quick sign of non-selvedge denim.
Wide looms don't make bad denim by themselves. Heddels makes the point that plenty of projectile-loom fabric is as good as selvedge, and that the cotton, the dyeing and the weight shape a pair of jeans as much as the loom does.
Levi's and Cone's red line
The first 501s were made from Amoskeag denim woven in Manchester, New Hampshire, with plain white selvedge. Around 1915 Levi's started buying denim from Cone Mills in Greensboro, North Carolina, and Japanese Wikipedia's chronology says Cone became the only supplier from 1922. Cone's first selvedge for Levi's was plain white too. In 1927, Levi's says, Cone developed a 10 oz red selvedge denim made only for the 501, woven on 29-inch looms, with a single red line to mark it as Levi's cloth. That's the redline collectors talk about. The late 1940s Lady Levi's 701 had a pink line instead.
Cone's White Oak plant in Greensboro, built in 1905, kept weaving selvedge on Draper X3 shuttle looms, some dating to the 1940s, until it closed at the end of 2017. Heddels called it the last and oldest selvedge denim mill left in the United States.
The looms didn't go for scrap. Heddels reported in 2019 that all 45 remaining Draper X3 looms went to a local investor, Will Dellinger, who planned to weave selvedge on them again, with one loom donated to the Greensboro History Museum. Japanese mills had kept narrow looms running all along. Studio D'Artisan's first jean in 1986 used denim woven on 27-inch shuttle looms, and Japanese reproduction brands have built on shuttle-loom denim ever since.
When Levi's moved off selvedge
The 501 was one of the last to go. Japanese Wikipedia says the 505 and other lots began moving to wide-loom denim from about 1969, while the 501 and 502 stayed on selvedge. That makes a selvedge 505 an early one.
For the 501 the date varies a little by source. Levi's says Cone adopted a wider, more economical loom around 1984. Heddels quotes Miles Johnson, the former head designer of Levi's XX line, saying the 501 used selvedge until 1985. Japanese Wikipedia has Cone stopping the 29-inch fabric in 1983, non-selvedge 501s appearing alongside selvedge ones from about 1981, and selvedge 501s ending around 1986. Taken together, selvedge 501s ran out in the early-to-mid 1980s, and a pair from the first half of that decade can go either way.
Lee and Wrangler are harder. The sources we read don't give a clean date for either brand, so don't apply the 501 rule to them. Date a Lee or a Wrangler by its own labels, tags and hardware.
What selvedge tells you
- On an original US 501, it means the mid-1980s or earlier. That's a wide window. It includes every Big E but also lots of small e pairs, so check the tab, the care tag and the back pockets too. Our 501 dating guide goes through each one.
- It doesn't make a pair rare. A late 1970s small e redline 501 has the same edge as a Big E and turns up far more often.
- It doesn't mean old at all on a reissue. Levi's says it brought selvedge back for Levi's Vintage Clothing and its premium jeans. Japanese reproduction brands built their names on shuttle-loom denim, and Wrangler made a selvedge 1947 jean in the USA around its 70th anniversary. Our reissue guide shows how to spot them.
- The coin pocket has its own clue. Heddels says 501s showed a selvedge edge on the inside of the watch pocket until about 1966.
Checking it in listing photos
Most sellers photograph the front, the back and the patch, and skip the seams. Ask for these instead.
- A cuffed hem. Turn up one leg and photograph the inside of the outseam in daylight. Selvedge shows as a tidy edge with its coloured line, and non-selvedge shows a looped overlock stitch.
- The colour of the line. Red on a men's 501 is Cone's Levi's line. Plain white on a 501 with no other ID points to the years before 1927, or to Amoskeag denim before about 1915.
- The overlock thread. On non-selvedge 501s, Heddels says copper-orange overlock points to about 1981–1984 and white to the years after.
- The care tag and country. Selvedge on a pair with modern care symbols or a Made in Japan label is a reissue, however old the details look.
If you're buying to wear, fit matters more than the edge. A non-selvedge 501 from the late 1980s can fit and fade as well as a redline one, and there are many more of them. Get the measurements first with our measuring guide, then let selvedge decide between two pairs that both fit.
