MAN -fadv-cct i&c PROBIEM
Cj f KEEPING HIS CLOTHES ON
hi* on with Ihnrn or fiohbone, artii thus S t
THE next time you tell your op
ponent in an argument to keep
his shirt on, just stop and think
of the literal implications of
what you are saying. What is he sup
posed to do if he wants to take his shirt
off: open the zipper in the twentieth
century fashion, or unbutton the but
tons as men have been doing for years?
For the problem of keeping his
clothes on is one which has absorbed
the energy and taxed the inventive
genius of man ever since those long
lost days when human beings were
really cavemen.
While different peoples chose to covet
different parts of their bodies, —Mo-
hammedans their faces, the Chinese
their artificially compressed feet, the
Sumatra and Elebes tribes their knees,
the Central Asians their finger-tips, the
Samoans their navels—others set up an
even wider variety of standards.
The Tahitians consider it okay to go
without clothes provided they are suffi
ciently tattooed; women of the Carib
bees may leave their hut without the
usual girdle, provided they are painted;
in Alaska women felt a deep sense of
shame if they had no plugs in their
lips.
Because there are so many different
ways of keeping clothes on, the Frank
lin Institute in Philadelphia, which tells
the story of scientific progress from
early days to the present in a series of
unusual exhibits, illustrates in a unique
manner the evolution of how people
have been keeping their clothes on since
those prehistoric days in 18,000 B. C.
when man, clad in fur or hide or skin,
made a contraption, which can be
called a pin, and slipped it through a
loop of hide on the fur.
TT was the Fuegians, who liv.ed at the
extremity of Cape Horn, who got the
idea of attaching the skins they wore
to their bodies by means of cords. Some
of the others took pieces of the bones
of animals they had eaten, tied them on
to the skins and used them to stick
through the loops they made. They also
used thorns and the handy fishbone as
a spike to put through tough skins to
hold them together.
As the < years wore on, the female of
the •'pecies didn’t like the idea of
adorning her clothes with animal bones;
PIC
The Tahitians consider it okay to it A
go without clothes, provided they \ 1 u
are sufficiently tattooed. 1 h(
she preferred polished balls of wood or
some cheap metal to use as fasteners,
and wove loops out of the various kinds
of wool and thread at her disposal in
order to take care of the antecedents
of buttons. Other kinds of fasteners
also were used; in remains of the Eu
ropean lake dwellers recently uncov
ered, there are many pins, some orna
mented, others in whose shape the
origin of the safety pin can be traced,
and still others of more elaborate
bronze.
Most authorities agree that the pin is
of the greatest antiquity, preceding the
needle by some time. From the natural
thorn used to fasten things together,
pins developed through bronze brooches
in the bronze age to the ordinary do
mestic pin.
Up around 3000 B. C., the picture
changed. Garments were sewn and be
came much more elaborate. As the fig
ure shows, the young lady who is chock
full of sex appeal didn’t like the idea
of wearing the bones of animals; she
made loops out of thread and succeeded
in creating what we call the frog.
Women of Crete chose elaborate cos
tumes with bodices cut very low, like
the crinolines of 1800 in France; they
often ornamented them with gold but
tons. Minoan women, dressed in
heavily-petticoated, skirted and
flounced garments reaching to their
ankles, kept their clothes on with tight
belts.
The Assyrians wore a tunic which
they kept on by means of a broad belt
with pendant tassels; there was a shawl
over it and they wound narrow strips
of cloth around their legs.
The Greeks had a word for it, too,
and theirs was the brooch, which can
really be called the granddaddy of the
safety pin, since it actually pierced the
garment and thus held both sides to
gether.
JtJ OMANS had no problem, in keeping
clothes on with outside pins or
brooches, for they wore the toga slung
over the shoulder. What they had to
achieve was particular skill in keeping
on their loose, flowing garments by
manipulating them over their bodies.
The women, however, not wearing the
toga, used brooches, clasps and girdles.
In the Middle Ages, tailoring was
born and clothes began to be made to
fit the body. The Germans in the four
teenth century began wearing their
tunics shorter and more closefitting.
Over the velvet, silk, or embroidered
waist, sometimes lined with fur. a belt
was buckled on loosely to hold it in
place. A sword and dagger were at
tached to the belt by special thongs.
Sleeves of tunics were laced or but
toned in a rather elaborate fashion.
Girdles, belts, bodice-laces and all
kinds of tying arrangements were sub
stituted for the frog idea and the but
tonhole was born, though in a slightly
different state from what it is now.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth cen
turies, ties were used even more ex
tensively than buttons; as a matter of
fact, the first mention of the button in
literature occurs in “Piers Plowman” in
1377 where there is talk of “botones
overgylte.”
Buttons, of course, were used long
before, but their first use was only as
ornament. Only later were they used
with loops and still later with the but
.tonhole. Brass buttons were first manu
factured in America in Philadelphia in
1750 and hardwood ones were made in
the Quaker City 20 years later. The
Quakers refused to wear any button
unless it was useful.
Hooks and eyes have a history all
their own. It was the warriors of old,
like the Norsemen, w’ho used buckles,
fastening one piece of metal onto an
other, and the Romans lent their help
to the hook and eye by bending one
piece of metal and cutting a hole in the
opposite one for it to fit into. This may
be taken as the ancestry of the hook
anff eye.
The nineteenth century saw the
purely mechanical fastener, in the form
of a snap, two pieces so made that when
they were pressed together they clicked
and stayed together. From the snap
there was h gradual progression to the
complicated zipper, which is composed
of one side which acts as a hook while
the other acts as an eye. The two are
in perpetual alignment so that, by mov
ing the catch up or down, the hooks can
be made to engage, and once they en
gage they stick and are perfectly closed.