I was half naked in a Philadelphia fitting room showing my asshole to a stranger when I sent my friend Marcus a text. I had a pair of raw denim jeans in my hands with a button fly. Instead of texting him THIS IS HOW MY JEANS BUTTON, I sent him a picture of the placket like it was a crime scene photo. “Why does this exist,” I followed up. “What problem is this solving.” He responded with “sex probably” and left me on read for the next two hours. This is both the most Marcus reply possible and also exactly zero help.
I’ve bought jeans for nearly a decade and a half and had never paused to consider why certain pairs button and others zip. Jeans come how they come, you learn to deal. It’s like how some jackets have that extra useless button on the sleeve, you just accept it.
I thought maybe it was some sort of old tradition that somehow stuck, like how some jeans have those stupid suspenders buttons sewn into the waistband. Useless buttons everyone has learned to live with because removing them would be costly and nobody cares enough about it to actually demand it gets done. I fully expected to chalk the whole thing up to denim nepotism posing as thoughtful design.
Buuuuut then I researched it like I would the stitch count on a pair of resale kicks to confirm they were actually authentic and found myself down a hole I wasn’t expecting.
The Rivet Rabbit Hole
The biggest thing I learned: Zippers were not good or widely trusted on clothing until the 1920s and 1930s. Before that you BUTTONED YOUR PANTS because there wasn’t really anything else that was widely available. Buttons were simple, they didn’t break (like zippers do) and if your only sewing kit was something you could fit in your pocket you could still fix a popped button yourself. Zipper got caught on something in 1890? Those pants are shyt out. If your button pops off? Easy fix.
Levi’s created the original 501 in 1890 and buttons were just something you did at the time, full stop. When they reimagined those bad boys in the 1930s with a zipper people did not love it. Cowboys ranchers and laborers didn’t like how a metal zipper pressed against them all day, sweaty and uncomfortable ways buttons didn’t and most importantly how a zipper broke versus how a button broke. A popped button can wait till later to be fixed. A zipper busting off while you’re working is far more embarrassing and those guys told each other and soon enough everyone knew putting zippers on pants was a stupid idea.
I did not see that coming. If you asked me I would have said old-timey folks probably kept buttons on their jeans out of stubbornness, some outdated “that’s how my granddad wore his jeans” bullshit that brands subtly hint at because “heritage” is the biggest word in fashion these days. Jeans with buttons survived for years not because they were loved, but because they were better and zippers couldn’t prove otherwise.
TLDR buttons stayed because they weren’t far enough removed from whenpants literally only had buttons that everyone forgot how gross zippers could be till they tried to bring them back.
I also loved this stupid little nugget far too much. Originally riveted work pants with metal zippers got gross in the sun and cowboys sitting on their horses with a hot zipper rubbing against them just wasn’t cool with that. Guys sitting on horses weren’t really into hot zippers? I read that line three times. Someone link click that THIS is how some of fashion’s most stubborn holdouts are decided. No, it’s not about durability. It’s not about cost. It’s horses getting too hot from zippers.
Why I’ll Still Always Zip
With all that in mind you’d think I would have joined the bandwagon, gone Button Fly Bible-thumping crazy, start bringing it up at dinner parties the way I talk about sneaker’s sole weight when they’re resale. Spoilers: I haven’t. Despite having four pairs of raw denim in my closet with button flies as we speak (3 more pairs than any man needs let’s be real) I will always take the zippered jean on any given day.
It’s the stupid reason ranchers came around to zippered pants too. Zinc got better, cheaper, less likely to ruin your day. Button flies are more time consuming which is why they cost more at the store.
If you don’t care about your jeans having the “authentic” button fly experience IRL nobody is popping 5 buttons to take a quick shit on the side of the highway.
The pairs with button flies stay in my closet because the niche folk who buy into raw denim care about that shit, believe it or not. To them the jean’s button fly is just as much of a feature as the denim is selvedge, or the fact they come with metal hardware, or how those jeans are designed to fade and crack in certain ways based on how you wear them for years. Slapping a modern zipper on that experience ruins it for them. It’s less about how it functions and more about the jean feeling consistent with itself.
My go to jeans, the ones I live in for work and grocery shopping and anyplace that isn’t some event I’m intentionally dressing for still zip. Every last pair. Knowing that buttons were kept on jeans because zippers broke easily, then kept because ranchers were too damn uncomfortable with them sitting on their horses makes me appreciate button flies in a way I didn’t before. What I thought was some silly tradition where dudes just refused to let go is actually just them refusing to wear something that felt sub-par. Maybe half the stuff I own is like that and I just never question it.
Ryan is a Nottingham resale obsessive who hunts secondhand trainers and streetwear, and can tell you which app, which search term and roughly which hour a good listing drops. He also knows how to check a pair is genuine.
