All for the Want of a Button: “Déboutonner la Mode” @ Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris |

According to materials scientists and historians the downfall of Napoleon's great army was caused not by powerful weapons, but by tiny buttons. In December 1812, Napoleon's army, originally comprising 600,000 soldiers, returned from Russia with only 10,000 men. Unbeaten until then, the soldiers had to fight against adverse weather conditions, but also against a terrible wardrobe malfunction caused by chemical properties: the buttons of their uniforms that also held up their pants were indeed made of tin, a metal that turns into gray dust when the temperature drops.

Such a fascinating story would be enough to inspire an entire research about the chemical properties of certain materials employed in fashion, but it is also the sort of unexpected historical event that prompts you to find out more about key fashion elements and features such as buttons.

If you actually want to learn more about the fascinating history of these fasteners, you can do so at "Déboutonner la Mode" ("Unbutton Fashion"), a new exhibition currently on at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris.

The show focuses on the history of buttons in a chronological order (from the 13th century on) and does so in a clever and intriguing way, looking also at garments and accessories from different times and decades.

The main point of curator Véronique Belloir is highlighting the role of buttons in shaping the body silhouette decade after decade. Buttons have indeed been instrumental in creating tight fitting and body hugging pieces.

The event features roughly 3,000 buttons from the rich and eclectic collection of Loïc Allio: sizes vary (visitors will be confronted by tiny buttons and by unexpectedly large ones as well), and so do materials.

Wood, bone, mother of pearl, fur, raffia, papier-mâché, plastic and even exotic elephant skin, and the techniques employed to manufacture the buttons on display prove that these pieces are proper works of art, quite often created by highly skilled craftsmen such as embroiderers, ceramicists, jewellers and silversmiths.

Among the most exceptional pieces there are buttons with portraits in the style of Fragonard, pieces inspired by La Fontaine's fables by silversmith Lucien Falize, a set of eight birds painted on porcelain by Camille Naudot and a series of 792 buttons by sculptor Henri Hamm, plus pieces by Sonia Delaunay and Line Vautrin.

Just like the shape, size and materials they are made in, the function of buttons changed throughout history: the displays in the first rooms of the event show that most of the buttons on opulently embroidered waistcoats from the 18th century (the golden age of buttons in France) had indeed an ornamental purpose (only two or three buttons were functional) and were therefore considered as sartorial flourishes signalling wealth.

As the years passed, buttons turned into tiny canvases exquisitely decorated with little scenes and allegories, and at times were even built to contain keepsakes such as dried flowers, hair cuttings or tiny insects.

From decorative closures, buttons were then reinvented when they entered a woman's wardrobe and were employed not just on dresses and blouses, but also on ankle boots and gloves.

On both men and women's clothes, buttons helped accentuating specific body lines, highlighting the arms or the curve of the bosom, turning from decorative elements or functional fasteners into objects of seduction.

Automated button-manufacturing arrived with the industrial revolution, but, during the 1900s, a few fashion designers turned to artists who created for them unique pieces.

French painter Maurice de Vlaminck, one of the main figures of the Fauve movement, created buttons for Paul Poiret; jewellers Jean Clement and François Hugo and artists Jean Arp and Alberto Giacometti were commissioned buttons (in the most disparate materials including ceramic and plastic) by Elsa Schiaparelli.

A special display dedicated to Schiaparelli allows visitors to marvel at the imaginative and fancy design of the buttons applied on her dresses and jackets, going from butterflies to hummingbirds.

As the years passed buttons were employed for different purposes: they traced the contours of the female silhouette in a design by Christian Dior; they were employed as minimalist and childishly fun elements in Courrèges' designs characterised by clean lines; they were used as embellishments in Yves Saint Laurent's creations.

Haute Couture maisons such as Dior, Balenciaga, Givenchy, Balmain and Yves Saint Laurent continued to turn to talented craftsmen (such as jewellers Francis Winter and Roger Jean-Pierre) to create exclusive buttons for them, but the exhibition also includes more contemporary designs covered in buttons by Jean Paul Gaultier and Patrick Kelly.

In more recent years the ready-to-wear market focused on more minimalist, subtle and discreet creations that gave back to the buttons their original function and reshifted the attention on the button as fastener.

Paintings, engravings, drawings, vintage magazines and fashion photographs by Irving Penn and Henry Clarke complete this exhibition that could be described as mainly focused on fashion and art, but offering an insight on something rather unusual as political and patriotic buttons (this is a chapter onto itself in the history of fashion with buttons supporting wars, revolutions, social movements and opinions).

A key scene of Peer Gynt by Henrik Ibsen was inspired by the author's boyhood days when Ibsen did some button-moulding. In the play, Gynt confronts the Button-Moulder who explains him that those human beings who have done something good or bad live on in heaven or hell, while the vast majority, the great average, being like defective buttons, must be merged in the mass and end up in the Button-Moulder's ladle.

In "Déboutonner la Mode" buttons are not average: they are delicate tokens, unforgettable mementos and treasured symbols that allow us to chronicle the past, rethink the present and maybe foresee the future through a simple gesture – buttoning and unbuttoning – assimilated in childhood and cherished until death.

"Déboutonner la Mode", Musée des Arts Décoratifs, 107 Rue de Rivoli, 75001 Paris, until 19th July 2015.

Image credits for this post

1. Elsa Schiaparelli, jacket, Summer 1937
Butterfly buttons in rhodoid, Les Arts Decoratifs UFAC collection
© Les Arts Décoratifs, Paris / Photo: Patrick Gries

2. Late 18th century
Wax on painted metal
© Les Arts Décoratifs, Paris / Photo: Jean Tholance

3. Attributed to Fragonard, late 18th century
Miniature on ivory
© Les Arts Décoratifs, Paris / Photo: Jean Tholance

4. Found button, circa 1780
Mother-of-pearl
© Les Arts Décoratifs, Paris / Photo: Jean Tholance

5. Henri Hamm, 1915-1920
Horn
© Les Arts Décoratifs, Paris / Photo: Jean Tholance

6. Henri Hamm, circa 1915
Galalith
© Les Arts Décoratifs, Paris / Photo: Jean Tholance

7. Sonia Delaunay, circa 1925
Marquetry
© Les Arts Décoratifs, Paris / Photo: Jean Tholance

8. Garter button, circa 1952
Painted silk
© Les Arts Décoratifs, Paris / Photo: Jean Tholance

9. Button , circa 1920
Gouache on paper under glass , silver mount
© Les Arts Décoratifs , Paris / Photo: Patrick Gries

10. François Hugo, enamel, circa 1940
© Les Arts Décoratifs, Paris / Photo: Jean Tholance

11. Alberto Giacometti for Elsa Schiaparelli, early 1930s
Gilt bronze
© Les Arts Décoratifs, Paris / Photo: Jean Tholance

12. François Hugo for Elsa Schiaparelli, circa 1940
Enamelled ceramic
© Les Arts Décoratifs, Paris / Photo: Jean Tholance

14. Elsa Schiaparelli, jacket, Spring 1938
Lesage embroidery, resin buttons molded with inclusion of flowers. Les Arts Decoratifs, UFAC collection © Patrick Gries

15. Christian Dior ready-to-wear, 1960-1970
Gilded moulded plastic
© Les Arts Décoratifs, Paris / Photo: Jean Tholance