Buttons began as jewellery, not shirt fasteners
Shell discs at Mohenjo-daro may be five thousand years old, yet they ornamented cloth long before anyone punched a buttonhole. Medieval Europeans still relied on toggles and lacing until thirteenth-century German tailors changed how garments closed—and how power dressed itself.
A button joins two pieces of fabric by slipping through a loop or sliding into a slit. Today plastic dominates, but makers also use metal, wood, and seashell. Archaeologists treat ornate buttons as serious artifacts. The earliest known examples from the Indus Valley Civilization served decoration, not closure, during the Kot Diji phase around 2800 to 2600 BC. Ian McNeil noted a curved shell piece from Mohenjo-daro roughly five thousand years old.
Functional fastening arrived slowly. Roman leatherwork included early buttonhole-like slits; Byzantine and Egyptian tunics used buttons on cuffs and necklines by the fifth century. Proponents suggest Crusaders brought the button loop from the Middle East, enabling tighter men's tailoring. True buttonholes appeared in thirteenth-century Germany, and button-making guilds followed. King Louis IX of France initially grouped button makers with rosary makers before splitting them by material: horn and bone, base metals, or precious metals and glass.
Renaissance fitted doublets demanded rows of buttons; detachable sleeves, popular in Florence since the 1200s, added more. Luxury buttons encrusted with jewels were moved between garments via metal strips through the shank rather than thread. Seventeenth-century French law required silk-covered buttons to protect Lyons and Paris silk workers, while England briefly banned fabric-covered buttons that threatened professional button makers.
The humble fastener scaled globally. A 1918 United States survey listed dozens of button materials from vegetable ivory to papier-mâché. Over sixty percent of the world's supply now comes from Qiaotou in Yongjia County, China. Classic Western tailoring still places buttons on the left for women and the right for men—often explained by sword drawing or right-handed servants, though the reasons remain uncertain.
Source: Button
