Jeans |
| Written by Robert Rutherford | |||||||||||
| Tuesday, 10 March 2009 | |||||||||||
 Why do jeans have buttons, not zips? I have finally reached the point where every single pair of jeans I own has a button-fly. Buttons are not my preference for jeans. I'd much prefer to have a practical zip-fly and always look for zip-flies, but such an item as reasonably styled jeans that fit me which have a zip-fly have seemingly become extinct. Surely buttons are a completely antiquated design feature for jeans to have, for the simple reason that they tend to come undone whether you want them to or not. But it's the re-buttoning that I have the biggest problem with. Why, when stood in the Gents toilets after a few beers during a busy night down the pub, should I have to struggle so much with my own button-fly that it looks as though I'm having a fight with my own, you know...? I would forgive the jeans manufacturers use of buttons every single time this happened if it was not for the invention of the zip. Despite denim work-wear being available worldwide for literally hundreds of years, it was in America in 1873 that jeans began to take the form we're all so familiar with today. Jacob Davis, who'd started to use rivets to reinforce denim trouser pockets, was co-issued a patent with Levi Strauss and they then began to manufacture what Americans amusingly call pants. In 1890, Levi first assigned the number 501 to the type of jeans that they manufactured and history was made. At least that's what Levi would have you think, whereas the red tab didn't actually appear until 1936, and it wasn't until the 1960's that the now familiar design and name of Levi's 501's eventually appeared. Although fashion history was genuinely still made, it just wasn't at the times that Levi seem to infer in their numerous advertising campaigns. The zip, zipper, or zip fastener was first invented in 1851 and pre-dates the first jeans patent, although it wasn't until 1914 that a truly practical and consistently workable version was released. Between 1851 and 1913 there were many thousands of cases of people being completely imprisoned in their clothing by a jammed zip. In fact, so many people ended up trapped by their zippers that the sales for clothing scissors actually increased during that period. It took 63 years of hard work and innovation by a variety of people to finally create a safe, fully working version. OK, so I don't know if that last bit is true as I haven't read everything about the various incarnations of zip fasteners prior to 1914, but I'd like to think that the continual improvement was down to accidental zip based self-bondage and the subsequent clothing massacres needed to escape it. So with the perfection of zip fastening technology, it would seem a really obvious idea for jean manufacturers to produce a pair of jeans that allow easy access to your essential bits via the swift and simple use of a zip. Funnily enough, that is exactly what happened and even by the 1940's, at a time when jeans were still classed as work-wear, men's jeans commonly had a practical zip up front and ladies jeans had a ladylike side zip. My main point being that even when my Grandma was a teenager, jeans had already progressed beyond button flies. In the 1950's, blue jeans were first adapted from work-wear to fashion-wear when they became the trouser choice of an entire generation of rebellious American teenagers. These teenagers would often become stereotyped as trouble-makers and many venues right the way across America started to bar people from entering simply for wearing blue jeans. It's the type of dress code that we're all familiar with nowadays, but in the 1950's it was front page news. Films like ‘The Wild One’ with Marlon Brando, and novels like ‘On The Road’ by one of my own literary heroes, Jack Karouac (who was ironically actually called Jean), helped set the rebellious jeans-wearing style for the 1950's. So, during the mass carnage and material shortages of World War II it was completely possible to manufacture jeans with zips even though fabric shortages meant that luxuries could not be added, such as belt loops and back pockets. Afterwards when the post-war teenage generation rebelled against everything in sight they didn't mind having a zip on their jeans either. They were able to rebel against society but still have access to their essential bits when they needed to. In terms of a rebellious clothing choice, jeans were both youthful and rebellious whilst simultaneously being really very sensible and hard-wearing. Hippies continued the rebellious jeans wearing trend in the 1960's and although the style was somewhat adapted to express a different kind of rebellion, even the hippies didn't specifically rebel against zips and probably liked the quick access to their naughty bits that a zip would provide. The trend continued throughout the 1970's as jeans became common enough to be deemed socially acceptable, whilst retaining enough of the subversive jeans wearing culture to remain cool. More expensive designer jeans began appearing in the shops until the 1980's when the designer jeans market started to really take flight. In 1980 Calvin Klein launched an advertising campaign featuring a dubiously young fifteen year old Brooke Shields squeezing herself into a pair of exceedingly tight jeans and then demonstrating exactly how flexible they were whilst talking seductively about genes. Hardly the cleverest play on words, but if you look for the advert on youtube, which no doubt many of you will, you can clearly see Brooke using a zip to fasten up her jeans, before doing all of the flexing. In 1984, Levi somehow managed to reinvent themselves as exactly the same company that they'd always been and ruined all the progress jeans design had made for nearly a hundred years by marketing their vintage 501 jeans with a button-fly in their famous laundrette stripping advert. The vintage aspect of 501 jeans was marketed by Levi throughout the 1980's despite the jeans not being the original 501 work-wear design that had no pockets, no belt loops or external rivets that scratched furniture and ripped the jeans apart. In fact, the only single genuinely vintage design feature to remain was the button-fly. Considering Levi were completely willing to ignore the original 501 design and update many of the design flaws of the original 1873 design, I have absolutely no idea why they left the buttons in place. This button-fly trend has continued ever since and, I hope, is now at breaking point. There is a far larger and more expensive jeans market today than ever there was before and yet our lust for a retro, warn out, pre-used, vintage, fatigued-look is also fuelling the use of antiquated, impractical and challenging fastenings, such as buttons. It amazes me that on a pair of jeans with a pocket specifically designed to fit an mp3 player, they still have a design feature as old as a button-fly. Putting buttons onto jeans instead of zips is the design equivalent of Ferrari using wooden wheels on their latest car, or Sony releasing a black and white television. Progress has happened, and not even recently, so why not embrace modern design - just like they did in the old days? Zips even make a far better noise than buttons. There is no way in which a zip isn't superior, except for the fact that you’re far less likely to get any unfortunate skin caught within buttons. But surely that isn't the sole reason for buttons on jeans?
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