#button-fly jeans

There were a number of funny quips in the last episode but one left me pondering. Why would button-fly jeans be out of place? They are the original fly closure. So I did a little digging.

On May 20, 1873, Levi’s created their original 501 button-fly jeans.  Though zippers were around in other parts of clothing, it wasn’t until “1937 when the zipper beat the button in the "Battle of the Fly." French fashion designers raved over the use of zippers in men's trousers and Esquire magazine declared the zipper the "Newest Tailoring Idea for Men." Among the zippered fly's many virtues was that it would exclude "The Possibility of Unintentional and Embarrassing Disarray."” However, zipper-fly was still not in jeans yet.

“It wasn’t until 1947 that Levi’s added a zipper fly to jeans, hoping to appeal to female customers. While western women who worked on ranches had been wearing men’s button fly jeans for years, many proper women on the East Coast considered the button version of jeans to lack modesty.” In the 1950s, James Dean wore jeans in Rebel Without A Cause making them a fashion statement for youth rebellion which lead to their eventually mainstream popularity in the 1960s and beyond.