Unremarkable Buttons

The earliest known button, writes Ian McNeil in An Encyclopedia of the History of Technology, "was originally used more as an ornament than as a fastening, the earliest known being found in the Indus Valley [now Pakistan]. It is made of a curved shell and about 5000 years old." Early buttons like these usually consisted of a decorative flat face that fit into a loop. Buttons appeared as a means to close cuffs in Eastern Roman, and Byzantine empires, and to fasten the necks of Egyptian tunics, no later than the 5th century AD. Functional buttons with reinforced buttonholes for fastening or closing clothes appeared in Germany in the 13th century. Ornate buttoning among the wealthy required some help. During the Renaissance era in Europe is when buttons migrated to different sides of a shirt for men and women. Men usually donned their own shirts, so their buttons faced right for their convenience. Women with ladies’ maids wore their buttons on the left, to make it easier for the maids to maneuver while facing them. The Industrial Revolution helped popularize and democratize buttons. Once they became cheap enough to produce en masse, buttons by the hundreds lined most kinds of tight-fitting clothing, including shoes. More buttons, closely spaced, gave the wearer the tightest fit. Buttons have proven to be firmly fastened to the fabric of human society – at least the past five thousand years of it. Even with the development of zippers, poppers and Velcro, buttons are still the fastening of choice for people the world over.