On May 20, 1873, Levi Strauss patented the Levi's 501s for jeans. Now, 150 years later, the garment has long been a part of popular culture, and has graced one more famous butt after another.

The connection to celebrities has been crucial for the jeans model's status today, according to SVT Kulturnyheterna's fashion critic Dennis Dahlqvist:

– The connection and the mass media attention is what makes the garment iconic, not that they fit great, he says to SVT and tells when he as a teenager in the 1970s bought his first pair:

"All of a sudden it was like: okay, now we have to have 501s. It's the only time in history that I've felt like I can't wear any pants other than Levi's 501s.

Toyboy gave icon status

Over the decades, the jeans model has been more or less trendy, worn by everyone from Marilyn Monroe and James Dean to Pamela Anderson and Kurt Cobain.

But in the 1980s, something happened that established the jeans model's iconic status once and for all. And this thanks to a commercial with the artist – and also "Madonna's toyboy" – Nick Kamen, says Dennis Dahlqvist:

"The commercial was very retro and it was the first time they made retro like this. Then this whole thing of objectifying men. It was quite new, he says and continues:

"There were a lot of things that came together in this moment when Nick Kamen takes off his pants that made the jeans finally become what they are today.

The commercial was released in 1984. In the same year, Bruce Springsteen releases the album "Born in the USA", whose well-known cover is taken by photographer Annie Leibovitz and where Bruce Springsteen is seen posing in a pair of Levi's 501s.