It seems that it was Elias Howe, the inventor of the sewing machine, who received the first patent for an “automatic, continuous clothing closure” in 1851 (although it is Whitcomb Judson who is officially credited as the inventor of the zipper, with his 1893 patent). A zipper, like a button, is an unlikely object in its own right; so much so, that probably not everybody has seen zippers before being sewn into clothing, particularly in these wasteful times in which mending clothing is a rarity. The object we all know has a narrow fabric part (tape) with a protruding set of meshed hardware in the middle (chain) formed by small teeth and operated by a metal piece (slider). When installed in a garment, the zipper gives up its objectuality to become a silent mechanism that provides full functionality to the piece of clothing where it is installed. In a very basic way, the duality of the zipper -move one way, zip, move the opposite way, unzip- is comforting in its simplicity and allows for great symbolism and mental associations in regards to the human need for dressing and undressing, a ritual that we repeat several times every day, a ritual with different meanings and intentions, often made possible by the smart mechanism we so take for granted. Never such a “dumb” mechanism generated such complexity of thoughts, such a variety of uses, from the sinful to the pure, from the luxurious to the everyday.
