Getting dressed takes a quarter of an hour and most of it is buttons

Buttons up the front, buttons on the cuffs, buttons up both boots. Got to the top and I'm one hole off. — Man late for church, 1895

The first try, shown at the 1893 world's fair in Chicago, had the one problem a fastener can't have: it came open on its own. Hardly anybody wanted it. In 1913 Gideon Sundback worked out two rows of little teeth, pulled together by a slider, that stayed shut. A boot company named it the zipper ten years later. By 1937 Esquire was telling men to wear one in their trousers, to prevent "unintentional and embarrassing disarray." That had been the early models' specialty.

Holdouts: the classic Levi's 501 jeans, which still button up the front.

The full file

Elias Howe, the sewing-machine man, patented something like it in 1851, more than 40 years before the Chicago fair. He never put it on the market.

Sundback's version went on sale in 1914, and the patent came through in 1917. The first big customer was the military. That same year the Navy put the fasteners on windproof flying suits.

Then fashion took it up. In 1935 Elsa Schiaparelli covered her collection in bright zippers that didn't match the cloth, on purpose. The Met calls them a classic Schiaparelli detail. From a thing nobody wanted to a thing people showed off. Took about forty years.