TED Talks · Small thing Big idea

How the button changed fashion

There are no bad buttons, there are only bad people. How does that sound, okay?

Level: B1 · 42 sentences

Transcript

  1. There are no bad buttons, there are only bad people.
  2. How does that sound, okay?
  3. No one knows who invented the button.
  4. It might have shown up as early as 2000 BCE.
  5. It was decorative when it first started,
  6. Just something pretty sewn onto your clothes.
  7. Then about 3,000 3,000 years later, someone finally invented the buttonhole.
  8. And buttons were suddenly useful.
  9. The button and the buttonhole is such a great invention.
  10. Not only does it slip through the buttonhole,
  11. But then it kind of like falls into place.
  12. And so you're completely secure, like it's never gonna open.
  13. The design of a button hasn't changed much since the Middle Ages.
  14. It's one of the most enduring designs in history, for me.
  15. The best buttons are usually round.
  16. There's either a dome button with a little shank or there's just this sort of like round
  17. Thing with either a rim or not a rim,
  18. Either two holes or four holes.
  19. Almost more important than the button is the button hole. And the way you figure
  20. That out is the diameter of the button plus the width of the button plus a little bit of ease.
  21. Before buttons, clothes were bigger.
  22. They were more kind of amorphous.
  23. And people like wriggled into them or like just kind of wrapped themselves in things.
  24. But then fashion moved closer to the body as we discovered uses for the button.
  25. At one time, it was the one way to make clothes fit
  26. Against the body.
  27. I think the reason buttons have endured for so
  28. Long historically is because they actually
  29. Work to keep our clothes shut.
  30. Zippers break. Velcro makes a lot of noise,
  31. And it wears out after a while.
  32. If a button falls off, you just literally sew that thing on.
  33. A button is kind of there for the long run.
  34. It's not just the most elemental design ever.
  35. It's also such a crazy fashion statement.
  36. When I was a kid, my mom knit me this beautiful sweater.
  37. I didn't like it, and then I found these buttons,
  38. And the minute the buttons were on the sweater, I loved it.
  39. If you don't have good taste
  40. And you can't pick out a button,
  41. Then let someone else do it.
  42. You know, I mean that.