How the button changed fashion Small Thing Big Idea a TED series
Translator: Camille Martínez
Reviewer: Krystian Aparta
There are no bad buttons,
there are only bad people.
How does that sound? OK?
[Small thing.]
[Big idea.]
[Isaac Mizrahi on
the Button]
No one knows who invented the button.
It might have shown up
as early as 2000 BCE.
It was decorative when it first started,
just something pretty
sewn onto your clothes.
Then about 3,000 years later,
someone finally invented the buttonhole,
and buttons were suddenly useful.
The button and the buttonhole
is such a great invention.
Not only does it slip
through the buttonhole,
but then it kind of falls into place,
and so you’re completely secure,
like it’s never going to open.
The design of a button hasn’t changed much
since the Middle Ages.
It’s one of the most enduring
designs in history.
For me, the best buttons
are usually round.
There’s either a dome button
with a little shank,
or there’s just this sort of round thing
with either a rim or not a rim,
either two holes or four holes.
Almost more important than the button
is the buttonhole.
And the way you figure that out is:
the diameter of the button
plus the width of the button,
plus a little bit of ease.
Before buttons, clothes were bigger –
they were more kind of amorphous,
and people, like, wriggled into them
or just kind of wrapped
themselves in things.
But then fashion moved closer to the body
as we discovered uses for the button.
At one time, it was the one way
to make clothes fit against the body.
I think the reason buttons have endured
for so long, historically,
is because they actually work
to keep our clothes shut.
Zippers break;
Velcro makes a lot of noise,
and it wears out after a while.
If a button falls off,
you just literally sew that thing on.
A button is kind of there
for the long run.
It’s not just the most
elemental design ever,
it’s also such a crazy fashion statement.
When I was a kid, my mom knit me
this beautiful sweater.
I didn’t like it.
And then I found these buttons,
and the minute the buttons were
on the sweater, I loved it.
If you don’t have good taste
and you can’t pick out a button,
then let someone else do it, you know?
I mean that.