Zip it good: Zippers are hot in fall fashion

Bits of hardware, zippers are zippily construed as signs of hard-bitten chic. They bared their teeth in the ’80s and, along with other echoes of that decade, have made a comeback.

An ornamental motif in accessories — on everything from hair bands to high-top sneakers — zippers have recently become a regular feature in ready-to-wear. For a few seasons already, they have been unabashedly exposed down the backs of dresses. This fall, they travel the lengths of Balmain skirts, Proenza Schouler coats, Haider Ackermann pants and Isabel Marant leggings.

Instant signals of industrial edge, zippers, nonetheless, have their gooey aspect: They brought out the soft side of Karen Walker, the pillpopping cynic on Will & Grace, who, in one episode, admitted: “I love Chinatown. You can buy a bag of zippers for a dollar. I hand them out to poor kids. I love to watch the look on their little faces as they zip and unzip their new toys.”

An ornamental motif in accessories — on everything from hair bands to high-top sneakers — zippers have recently become a regular feature in ready-to-wear.

Robert Friedel, an American professor of history, found the slide fastener so fascinating that he was moved to write a book about it. In his introduction to Zipper: An Exploration in Novelty, published in 1996, he speaks touchingly of the ordinary little gadget as a symbol of the newness that people in modern times have come to expect and cherish as an improvement in the human condition.

What makes Canadians grow really misty-eyed is the idea that the zipper was a Canadian invention. Though this wasn’t the case, it is still no reason to put away the hankies: Most of the credit goes to Gideon Sundbäck, an engineer who was born in Sweden in 1880, immigrated to the United States and was working for the Automatic Hook and Eye Company in Hoboken, N.J., in 1913 when he perfected the device that had been worked on by several others — most notably American Whitcomb Judson. Besides the slide fastener, Sundbäck also invented the machinery that was best suited to making them and was the pride of the Lightning Fastener Company, which he became president of and moved to St. Catharines, Ont., in 1925. The company lasted until 1981, at which time hometown girl Linda Evangelista was about to become the region’s second most important contribution to fashion history.

Keep reading to find more information on the history of the zipper and its modern representations.....

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PUBLICATION DATE: 2009-09-01 , Tiré de ELLE Québec magazine, septembre 2009