People are only just discovering what the metal studs on their jeans are really for

Have you ever wondered just why there are a series of metal studs on Levi jeans?

It might seem like a purely aesthetic choice, but there was actually a practical reason for why the iconic jeans included the studs.

Levi Strauss & Co. patented the design in 1873, and in time, the rivets became an iconic part of the design.

One person took to Reddit to ask about them, writing: "Do they serve a purpose, practical or otherwise? If not... Why are they there?"

Plenty of people took a guess as to why, with one joking: "To punish you for taking your laundry out of the dryer too soon."

Another wrote that they were to 'scratch the hell out of cellphone screens when putting them back in your pocket without looking'.

These are both interesting guesses, but neither of them come close to the actual reason.

So why are these rivets actually put onto the jeans?

Jeans are a fashion staple (Shana Novak / Getty)

It all comes down to back when jeans were used as hard-wearing work trousers.

Back before the days of fast fashion, people needed their clothes to last, especially if you were working in a manual job.

A good pair of denim jeans is a very hardwearing garment, but people working down mines found there was one issue that kept cropping up.

This was that the jeans would fray around the pockets, the weak point where the stitching connected together.

The metal studs were driven through the weak points of the garment to reinforce the seams and keep them together.

In the modern world, jeans are not used so much as industrial garments.

Nonetheless, the rivets have remained as a purely aesthetic part of the jeans design, completing the look.

These jeans are from the 1880s (liveauctioneers.com)

There is also a small pocket inside the larger pocket on the jeans.

This tiny pocket was originally designed to hold a pocket watch, before wristwatches became the most popular form of watch.

The jeans are clearly extremely hardwearing, as one pair from the 1880s was found in an abandoned mine in a wearable condition.

After going up for auction, the jeans sold for $87,000.

But how were they dated? Well, unfortunately, it was from a racist inscription on the label.

The label read 'the only kind made by white labor', a reference to the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act which barred Chinese people from working in the US.

The slogan was dropped in the 1890s, providing a date for the jeans, while also reflecting a sinister part of US history.