Ritsch, ratch. Does that say everything about the zipper? Not even close. As commonplace as it may seem today, it has an unimaginable history of technology and culture. It wasn’t just Whitcomb L. Judson who applied for a patent for it in the USA 130 years ago next Tuesday. More inventors and a lot of advertising were needed before it found its way into fashion and was finally celebrated on a scandalous record cover by the Rolling Stones.
In 1928, writer Kurt Tucholsky imagined what the inventor of the zipper might have looked like: a grumpy man, German-American and accountant in the flower seed trade. One night he comes up with an idea for his even more unloved wife’s unloved handbag. The gloss reads like a soap opera that, thanks to greedy investors, turns the poor inventor into a rich man who then loses everything again. Tucholsky plays brilliantly with inventor clichés. At the end it says bitingly: “No one can explain why, why the zipper works.”
The “uninterrupted garment closure”
It’s not that easy either. A button can be sewn on. A broken zipper still causes headaches to this day. Even at the beginning of its development, it was very tight. The American Elias Howe, who is considered to be the inventor of the sewing machine, was already thinking about an alternative to buttons, hooks, eyelets and lacing in the middle of the 19th century. He applied for a patent for a “continuous clothing fastener”. The chunky idea with hooks that slid over ribs has not yet caught on, writes Karl Nagele, who researched the history of technology as a zipper producer in the 1950s.
According to legend, US inventor Judson was annoyed by the time-consuming lacing of boots. At the end of the 19th century he was more interested in compressed air trams. But along the way, he decisively improved Howe’s zipper idea. Judson’s “clasp locker,” which he envisioned for shoes and mailbags, was a metal hook-and-loop construction with a sliding mechanism in the middle. At the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893, however, the hoped-for recognition did not materialize – too complicated, too expensive, not reliable enough. This zipper was unthinkable for clothing. The invention had more of the charm of a bicycle chain – it could rust.
Does the world need zippers?
Did the world need the zipper? Or do inventors rather believe that they urgently need it? Even Tucholsky took aim at the opposing trends of technological euphoria and skepticism about progress. For the cultural scientist Gabriele Mentges, the idea of the zipper also stands in the context of the phenomena of movement and acceleration in the industrial age. While buttoning or lacing still requires a sure instinct, which children have to learn with difficulty, a mechanical movement of the hand is enough for the zipper. However, the technology behind it cannot be understood in a jiffy – even the “Show with the Mouse” needed almost four minutes.
The world owes the basis of today’s mechanism with tiny teeth that mesh when pulled tight to the native Swede Gideon Sundbäck. He studied mechanical engineering in Bingen in the Rhineland and emigrated to the USA. Sundbäck’s smooth-running zip version, sewn into pilot’s clothing, made friends with the US Navy during World War I, and later with overshoe manufacturers. From the 1920s, patents and the exchange between the old and new worlds also led to the founding of zipper factories in Europe, for example in Nuremberg and Wuppertal, as US researcher Robert Friedel proves.
One zipper or five buttons?
Many Germans quickly classified the zipper under the Modern label, adds Friedel. First with leather goods, then with coarse shoes – only later with clothing. In 1935, a Bavarian trouser manufacturer had to bang the drum for his new slit variant. “Reliable, elegant and zippered” was the slogan of the advertising campaign. There was an information note in each pair of trousers: “With a zip – gone are the transverse creases, the bulging at the side.” And: five buttons less.
Not to be forgotten: the fastening techniques for men’s and women’s clothing – always a delicate matter for cultural researchers at the interface between the body and the outside world – only slowly became the same in the 20th century. Researchers emphasize that long zippers on the back, which require yoga-like contortions, were reserved for women’s fashion.
Feminist literature, the “zipper” and the “vulgar” zipper
There is no pretty and onomatopoeic name like “zipper” in the US in German. After sliding or separating closures, the rather technical and bulky word zip remained. Unlike its much older competitor, Knopf, it didn’t find its way into metaphors like “buttoned up.” It’s different in English, reports historian Friedel. There, the feminist literature of the 1970s came up with the term “zipless fuck” for casual anonymous sex, while “zipper control” stands for marital fidelity. In German, the term only made a career in road traffic: with the zipper process.
Maybe unconventional talents were needed for fashion ideas – like the Italian designer Elsa Schiaparelli in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s. Friends with Salvador Dalí, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp and Jean Cocteau, she sported a skeleton-style dress and surrealist hats. Unlike other fashion designers of her time, she was not stranger to the “vulgar” zipper and used it, now also made of colorful cellulose, in haute couture without a bashful facing strip.
In the post-war period, which brought about more flexible models made of plastic for mass production, the metal zipper made friends in the rocker and later also in the punk milieu – even without a function as a cool decorative element. Erotic, he came along in lacquer and leather as a quick ripper, which would have rather scared the historical Casanova. The Stones’ 1971 “Sticky Fingers” record, which Andy Warhol designed for a zip-up cover with skin-tight jeans, played with prudery in its own way.
Despite many improvements, the zipper has not won all along the line. Buttons, hooks and eyes are still there. Even self-closing shoes, which can now be bought in real life around 30 years after the second part of the film “Back to the Future”, have not replaced the good old shoelaces. (dpa)