Why can’t manufacturers of women’s clothing put the shirt buttons on the right side? The days of women having someone dress them are long gone. Our jeans have the buttons on the right, but our tops migrate to the left. Please explain the difference. — Janet, Delray Beach, Fla.
This is one of those questions that seems minor at first, and then becomes more and more resonant the more you think about it. It is genuinely strange that despite all the ways that old distinctions between men’s and women’s wear have disappeared, one of the few markers of gender differentiation that still exists is … button placement.
The most common is that when upper class ladies were getting dressed in the complicated layers of Renaissance and Victorian fashion, it was easier for the maids who were dressing them, and who had to face them to do so, to secure buttons on the left (that is, the maids’ right). Men of the same time periods mostly dressed themselves, so their buttons were on the right. Later, women who wanted to imitate the elite imitated their button placement, as did the manufacturers who sold them on the idea.
Another conjecture has it that men’s buttons were on the right because when men went into battle back in the day, they needed to draw their swords, and swords were worn on the left. If a man’s jacket buttoned right over left, the sword could get caught in the openings. It was safer, thus, for them to button left over right.
This is similar to the argument of those who attribute the difference in button placement to decades of women riding sidesaddle on the left and desiring the most windproof jacket situation, which turned out to mean buttoning right over left. [...]
None of those old notions have any relevance today. So why do we remain stuck with a tradition they may have created?
“I don’t know,” said Simone Bellotti, the creative director of Jil Sander, when I asked why he thought the practice hadn’t changed. “Probably people still believe in this tradition. They don’t want to change. We like our attitudes, even if they are wrong.” After all, he said, “what I see, at least on my friends and my wife, is that they always prefer men’s stuff.”
Maybe, Bellotti said, it has to do with manufacturing. “Probably they have those machines, and they want to preserve this.”
Not so, said Louise Trotter, the creative director of Bottega Veneta — and she would know because when she arrived at Bottega 18 months ago, she decided to tackle the backward-looking button practice.
by Vanessa Friedman, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Dolly Faibyshev for The New York Times
Another conjecture has it that men’s buttons were on the right because when men went into battle back in the day, they needed to draw their swords, and swords were worn on the left. If a man’s jacket buttoned right over left, the sword could get caught in the openings. It was safer, thus, for them to button left over right.
This is similar to the argument of those who attribute the difference in button placement to decades of women riding sidesaddle on the left and desiring the most windproof jacket situation, which turned out to mean buttoning right over left. [...]
None of those old notions have any relevance today. So why do we remain stuck with a tradition they may have created?
“I don’t know,” said Simone Bellotti, the creative director of Jil Sander, when I asked why he thought the practice hadn’t changed. “Probably people still believe in this tradition. They don’t want to change. We like our attitudes, even if they are wrong.” After all, he said, “what I see, at least on my friends and my wife, is that they always prefer men’s stuff.”
Maybe, Bellotti said, it has to do with manufacturing. “Probably they have those machines, and they want to preserve this.”
Not so, said Louise Trotter, the creative director of Bottega Veneta — and she would know because when she arrived at Bottega 18 months ago, she decided to tackle the backward-looking button practice.
by Vanessa Friedman, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Dolly Faibyshev for The New York Times
