12> Accessories

By definition, an accessory is an object with a secondary, supplementary or subordinate function. There are accessories for our cars and houses; accessories for pets, gardens and activities, such as going back to school or going on vacation. There are accessories for us, like a tie strap or a pin-back button. And those are relatively inexpensive, if we compare them with the close to 150 billion dollars generated by jewelry sales back in 2006 (probably closer to 200 bil today). Our capitalist society is hyper-accessorized: what does that mean? How to justify this obsession with objects of secondary function? Is it that we are all set with necessary objects, objects of primary function, and that is why we set our eyes and open our wallets to objects of secondary function? How to differentiate between both categories, though? Is a Panama hat in the tropics an accessory or a primary object? Will Mandela consider his Makorotlo an accessory? I am sure that a person with 50 pairs of shoes in her closet does not consider them accessories either (I once met someone who claimed she had 250+ pairs). The question is one of necessity versus excess, that is: buy it; use it a few times; give it away or throw it away. Accessories may be prized possessions and that is dandy; the problem is when they are mere disposable, momentary possessions. Excess is so integrated in our lives, we can’t detect it anymore.

120. Tie strap

An invisible contraption: the tie strap -also known as tie down. As a kid I had to wear uniform to school, beige tie included. I learned to do my Windsor and half Windsor knots early on, and I practiced them every morning for many years. But I had never heard about tie straps until today. My question: is human civilization better off with tie straps than without? While I wonder what could possibly be the profile of your typical tie strap user, I learn that this rather insignificant object fulfils the function of keeping one’s tie close to one’s shirt. I have not worn a tie since my school days but, back then, the least of my problems was that my tie would separate from my shirt in a windy day. The tie strap is made of leather or plastic and connects tie and shirt by bridging the gap between two shirt buttons and looping through the tie label in the process. This little object is designed to provide an efficient way of restricting the movement of one’s tie while remaining out-of-sight. A tie strap belongs to the world of accessories, that is, unnecessary stuff that is sold to us to minimally improve our lives or, at least, to give us the impression that our lives are greatly improved and we are truly sophisticated individuals. Who could possibly think that inventing something to keep your tie under control could significantly improve anyone’s life?

119. Zipper

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.