Cavemen make coverings from animal hides, and held them together with strings of leather to close gaps against the cold. We have moved on a bit since those days, as pins, toggles, and buttons came along, with still some clothing laced up in the 18th and 19th centuries, so the invention of the zipper created a clothing revolution.

Whitcomb Judson, a Chicago inventor, is credited as the inventor of his 'clasp-locker' in 1893. Gideon Sunback was a Swedish-American electrical engineer, who was associated with his work in the development of the fastener before it was called a ‘zipper’ by B.F. Goodrich, and in 1923 the Goodrich Company used Sundback's fastener on a new type of rubber boot and referred to it as the ‘zipper’, and the name stuck. The two chief uses of the zipper in its early years were for closing boots and, weirdly, tobacco pouches. The ‘zipper’ had interlocking teeth, the forerunner of the zips we know today.

Throughout the 20th century, the zipper continued to evolve, with advancements in materials and manufacturing processes further enhancing its performance and versatility. Plastic teeth zippers and continuous coil zippers expanded its applications, making them suitable for a wide range of products.

Credits: PA;

YKK

The YKK Group is a Japanese company that are said to be the world's largest zipper manufacturer, making roughly half of all the zippers on earth. Can you imagine it? Half the world’s zippers are all made by one company! (Have a look in your wardrobe of zippered items, and I bet at least one of them has the initials YKK embossed on it). The initials YKK stand for Yoshida Kōgyō Kabushiki, and the zippers were originally made by hand, but in 1950, the company purchased a chain machine from the U.S. that allowed automation of the process.

One zipper gone wrong can render an entire garment unwearable. This consistent quality is a must for reputable fashion brands. For decades now, apparel makers who can’t afford to gamble on cut-rate fasteners have probably turned to this single manufacturer, YKK.

Trouser ‘flies’

The term ‘fly’ with regard to trouser fastenings meant ‘something attached by one edge’, like a flag from a rope or pole, and 19th-century tailors adopted the word ‘fly’ for the flap of cloth attached at one side to cover an opening in a garment, and ultimately for the trouser zipper.

So, let me tell you a story

This is a story about me, at around 16 years of age, on my first shopping trip to Oxford Street in London. I was a country girl, thus agog at the number of people on the street, how much traffic there was, the smell of the Underground (that still brings back memories to this day), and at the number of stores there were. An Aladdin’s cave and I had money in my pocket.

It was a rare hot summer, and I can even remember what I was wearing – an almost fluorescent orange and white dress in a typical 60’s style – very short and high-waisted. And importantly, it had a long zipper down the back. In my enthusiasm to buy clothes, I rushed into the first store I came to and gleefully gathered up a collection of garments to try on. As you know, changing cubicles are very small without much elbow room, and in my haste to get out of the above-mentioned dress to try on some potential new things, I broke that long zip on my own dress (it obviously wasn’t made by YKK) and dismayed, I stood there in this tiny cubicle with a dress almost in two halves. Well, I couldn’t go out with my backside on full view to the world, so was forced to buy and wear something from my bundle, and had the embarrassment of asking the saleswoman to cut the label off so store security wouldn’t rugby tackle me on the way out.

Is this a cautionary tale?

Maybe. Zippers can get stuck, break or stop working and are tricky to remove and replace - they require much work to remove. And for men – they can pinch delicate skin in the most intimate of places!