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Why Zippers Are On Different Sides For Men And Women's Clothing
For my dad’s 61st birthday, I bought him a charcoal gray New York Mets zip-up hoodie from sportswear retailer Modell’s. After unwrapping the sweatshirt, my father tried it on and it fit, but he said it “zipped on the wrong side” for a man’s piece of clothing. Convinced the hoodie, which simply boasted an orange Mets logo on the left breast, was meant to be worn by women, he returned it.
While I knew I took the sweatshirt off a rack in the men’s section, I wondered how and why the zipper alone had the power to convince him that the otherwise unisex garment wasn’t for him.
“Once upon a time, people would be taught that,” fashion historian Amanda Hallay told HuffPost of men’s clothing zipping on one side and women’s on the other. “It was so ingrained in everyone.”
Zippers follow a gendered precedent that had already been set by buttons. (Though these days, not all articles of clothing follow the rule ― it’s more of a mixed bag.)
“The button was invented in the late Middle Ages, and because of the sumptuary laws, only wealthy women were allowed to have buttons on their clothing,” Hally, who runs The Ultimate Fashion History YouTube channel, explained. “Wealthy women were dressed by their maids, and so the buttons were positioned where they were for maids, as most people are right-handed. That’s where it all started.”
Drexel University fashion design program director Lisa Hayes told HuffPost that breastfeeding could also play a role in why garments for women started out fastening on the left side.
“Most people are holding their baby in the left hand, therefore they have their right hand to use for opening a garment,” Hayes said.
As times changed and technology advanced, zippers soon became preferable to buttons. “By the late 1930s, zippers had begun to replace buttons as the favored method for certain garment closures,” said Christina Frank, Savannah College of Art and Design’s assistant director of...
