Do people still have button tins filled with hundreds of buttons, each one different, a world unto itself? Do mothers still take them out of a cupboard or down from a high shelf for their children to sift through on rainy afternoons?
I spent hours of my childhood with the family button tin, trolling the bottom, always coming up with a button I’d never seen before. That button tin was a treasure trove and one of my favorite toys.
Later in life, I forgot about buttons or, let’s say, they became functional objects, a part of everyday life. Buttoning up, unbuttoning, smooth yet by no means simple movements I undertook without giving them a thought.
Since I recently visited the biggest button tin in the world, all that has changed and I’ve returned to my earlier fascination with buttons. In fact, I’ll never look at a button in the same way again.
The “button tin” in question is on view in Paris at the Musée des arts décoratifs, the Museum of Decorative Arts, located in a wing of the Louvre. Continuing until July 19, 2015, “Déboutonner la mode,” “Unbuttoning Fashion,” is all about buttons, 3,000 of them, each one unique, each one a work of art in miniature, all part of a collection of 37,000 buttons acquired by the museum in 2012.
That’s a lot of buttons; it’s also a lot of history.
Buttons are as old as clothing and as far back as the Bronze Age, over three thousand years ago, our ancestors were using buttons to accessorize, but not to button up—they had not yet invented the buttonhole.
In 1250 in France, the first button-makers guild was created at a time when buttons were a luxury item and a token in the game of love. Aristocratic ladies wore tight-fitting gowns that buttoned up the back and had button-on sleeves, practical because they could be changed when dirty, romantic because they could be offered as keepsakes to their beloved knight.
Treated as family heirlooms, fashioned from gold or precious stones, they were passed down in wills and used to pay off debts. Monarchs passed laws against them. Aristocrats were stepping out of line, spending a fortune on buttons, and when they wore them at court, they out-dazzled the king.
The Church also understood the danger of buttons. The deadly sin of lust was associated not only with an intense desire for sex but also for luxury. All that money spent on buttons could lead to eternal damnation, as could their vain display on bodices, breeches or gowns.
In the 17th century, the Amish and the Quakers shared this view, which explains why they preferred clothing with hooks and eyes. Well into the 19th century, buttons were considered inappropriate on funeral garb.
But neither the Church nor the King could stop the rise or the spread of the button, and the French and American revolutions did the rest, transforming the precious buttons of the past into democratic commodities, with the help of the English, the first to mass-produce buttons in the mid-18th century.
In 1789, on both sides of the Atlantic, buttons participated in revolution and democracy. In America, men sported an American eagle or George Washington’s portrait on special buttons created for his inauguration. In France, revolutionaries proudly displayed their political convictions with buttons that were “bleu, blanc, rouge” (blue, white and red).
In those budding democracies, “campaign buttons” remained functional. Men used them to button coats or breeches. Women hardly wore them at all. When they did, however, a button could serve the same role as a brooch. Porcelain buttons were often hand-painted with the portrait of a child. Men’s buttons, on the other hand, took up the issues of the day: a call for an end to slavery, the celebration of the hot-air balloon, or souvenirs of famous monuments or events.
Sometimes a row of buttons could contain a riddle, a message of love or an in-joke for friends. Popular at the time of the French Revolution, this practice of using buttons to communicate continued well into the 20th century, as a woman’s dress from the 1940’s demonstrates: down its front, a row of buttons announces “my sweetheart is a prisoner of war.”
In the 19th century, men’s fashion became more sober and women’s fashion began imitating men’s. The braiding and triple rows of buttons found on military uniforms began appearing on women’s coats.
In general, as the button lost its prominence in men’s fashion, it began showing up everywhere in women’s, on camisoles, bloomers and petticoats, on skirts, dresses, gloves and boots. And once again, it became a marker of social class because only a woman with a lady’s maid could make sure she was properly buttoned up the back.
If the button had a heyday, it was the 20th century. Fashion, art, craftsmanship and mass production all united to turn it into a work of art accessible to everyone, and the number of materials used to produce buttons boggles the mind: glass, plastic, mother-of-pearl, straw, stone, fur, cut steel, papier-mâché, wood, nut and sea shells, copper, leather, even coal and elephant skin, to name just a few.
Also, once women got rid of their corsets, rejecting the hour-glass figure and smelling salts for freedom of movement and form, the button came into its own as a full-fledged fashion accessory. For the French designer Paul Poiret, whose 1920 dresses favored vertical lines, a button’s sole purpose was to bring harmony to the new feminine silhouette.
In the 1930’s, artists such as Salvador Dali made buttons and surrealism inspired fashion, as button-makers reached new heights of creativity. The most stunning example is a 1937 woman’s jacket by Elsa Schiaparelli. In the place of buttons, four painted plastic butterflies alight down its front.
For fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent, buttons were the jewels of his creations. The credo of Coco Chanel was “never a button without a buttonhole.” For both, buttons were as essential to fashion as any of the other materials used.
The 1950’s was the golden age of costume jewelry and the same techniques were often applied to buttons. If any readers have a button tin at home, I’d recommend they take a look inside. They may come across treasures, even objects of value, relics of that time.
All in all, the button may be small but it is not humble. And from now on, each time I touch or see one, I’ll give it the credit it’s due.
