What would life be like without buttons?

Nov. 16 is National Button Day, and that evokes memories of the great American comedic actor Red Buttons, who lived from 1919-2006. 

He was born Aaron Chwatt in Manhattan, a borough of New York City. As a teenager, Aaron took a job as an “entertaining bellhop” at a tavern nearby in The Bronx. 

The combination of Aaron’s red hair and the large, shiny buttons on the bellhop uniform he wore inspired orchestra leader Charles “Dinty” Moore to call the lad “Red Buttons”…and the name stuck.

 

Red Buttons won an Oscar and a Golden Globe for his supporting role in the 1957 film “Sayonara.” He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. 

Freelance journalist Jude Stewart reminds us that “children learn to button and unbutton early in life, and they keep doing it until they’re dead.” It’s an acquired skill, like tying one’s shoes in a pre-Velcro world.

 

“Proper buttoning” is a challenge, however, at any age. Perhaps Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), the German poet, playwright and novelist, said it best. He wrote: “Once you have missed the first buttonhole you’ll never manage to button up.” 

Buttons are part of our language, with assorted metaphors and similes. 

“Cute as a button” describes a small person who is charming, cuddly and attractive. 

“To take by the buttons” or to “buttonhole” someone means to detain another person in conversation against his or her will. Politicians have a knack. 

“Bless your buttons” can be found within the novel “Little Women,” written by American author Louisa May Alcott in 1868-69. Essentially, it’s a kind and sincere way of saying “bless your heart.”

 

Louisa May Alcott

“Bust your buttons” is a feeling of “extreme jubilation that presents a picture of one’s chest filling with such esteem and growing so big that it makes the buttons on your shirt pop off.” 

“Button your lip” means to “say nothing or stop talking.” 

“Buttoned-down” refers to one’s dress or attitude that can described as “conservative, conventional or staid.” 

The button-down collar was originally called a “polo collar” worn by English polo players in the late 19th century, invented to prevent their collars from flapping about their face while they rode. 

In 1896, John E. Brooks, the grandson of founder Henry Sands Brooks of Brooks Brothers, applied button-down collars to dress shirts, offering button-down shirts to the general public in the family stores.

 

The War of 1812 gave rise to Aaron Benedict’s factory in Waterbury, Conn., in order to supply brass buttons for the U.S. military. Importing buttons from England was no longer an option during the conflict. 

“Benedict bought up every brass kettle, pan and pot he could find and established a rolling mill to make buttons for the military. When Benedict ran out of brass, he turned to pewter,” said a spokesperson at the Waterbury Button Co.

Writing for Smithsonian Magazine, Danny Lewis said: “In the Victorian Era, women’s clothing was often much more complicated and elaborate than men’s – think petticoats, corsets and bustles. But while rich men often dressed themselves, their female family members most likely had servants to help them put on their clothes, both out of luxury and necessity.” 

Button collectors can connect through the National Button Society, established in 1938 and headquartered in Fairlawn, Ohio, near Akron. 

Today, the “button capital of the world” is Qiaotou in Yongjia County, China, producing around 60% of the world’s supply of clothing buttons.