They’re a tiny part of an overall garment, but buttons have been giving me the ick. More than any other detail, buttons will be the deciding factor when determining whether something will earn a place in my wardrobe.

I’m notoriously picky about everything, but the wrong button choice can ruin an otherwise lust-worthy item. It was seeing a 1940s tartan coat, finished with seven sturdy round buttons, pop up on my Instagram feed that solidified my thinking: modern versions often don’t quite measure up. Not weighty enough, moulded cheaply from plastic and generally... boring?

It’s not just what the buttons are made of but how they’re affixed that irks me. If they don’t stand tautly to attention as I do them up, drooping sadly instead of proudly pert, I feel similarly deflated as my hands move onto the next button hole.

It’s a petty gripe given the current state of the clothing industry, but when we’re all buying less, for economic and/or ethical reasons, the details matter. 

Some fastenings that have caught my eye in pleasing ways recently: a row of delicate pearl shanked buttons on a brushed cashmere cardigan at Elle & Riley popped up out of the fluff like tiny button mushrooms growing on a mossy log. A delicate cashmere cardigan purchased from Wixii does up tightly with a row of glinting shell buttons, thread through with a dark red thread that gives the appearance of reflective cat eyes. And I could never afford one, but I was quite taken by the costumey whimsy of the oversized screw-inspired metal buttons on Loewe’s $6000 knit cape.

Big button joy isn’t only tied to big price points. Stood squat but proud on the shelf of an op shop, tucked between a dvd and a dusty crime thriller novel, I recently spotted a pink lollyscamble like packet of mixed vintage buttons. It held all different shades and sizes jumbled together, a whole world of upcycling options for $10. Seeing them all muddled up like that reminded me of my grandmother’s button tin, a ramshackle collection of odds and ends saved to be reused, or just as mementos.

Emma Smith, who owns Greytown haberdashery store Miss Maude, says these button tins, and vintage buttons in general, are often linked to unique memories in ways modern clasps aren’t.

“Back then buttons were kept and cherished because you could use them for something else or they came off a garment that was maybe no longer wearable but had special memories. My dad used to be a captain at sea, so I remember there being gold buttons in this little basket. It had anchors and stuff on them, and they kind of told a story.”

Miss Maude sells a wide variety of vintage buttons alongside modern options, with Smith saying vintage options generally have more character. “They don’t make them like they used to, they’re just not as ornate or as pretty, or as detailed.” 

She sources her vintage line from Europe, with most dating back to the 1920s or 50s. “That really does correlate with that whole kind of post war manufacturing efficiencies, manufacturing scaling up. From there on we started to see a decline in the ornate button or the variety.”

She thinks the lack of intricacy available nowadays aligns with a tighter focus on cost. “You’ve got to think about the details from a cost perspective, as opposed to a delight perspective. It just makes sense financially: if a business can find a button or a small selection of buttons that work across a wide range, they can then obviously buy in bulk and they don’t have to worry about wastage or anything like that. So it makes perfect sense from a commercial manufacturing perspective.”

Compounding that, says Smith, is a collective devaluing of the crafting and making. “We as a society in general have been trained to not actually value clothing and what goes in to create it.”  

Smith suspects that’s why vintage buttons are popular with her customers who make their own clothing. “Makers think about them a little bit more because we’ve got to choose a button, right? They’ve spent so much time and effort getting to that point and the button is always the final thing. They want to make sure that it works, and it’s nice.”

Wellington-based brand Kowtow has also put a lot of thought into its button choice. As part of a continued drive to eliminate all plastic from its clothing manufacturing processes, the brand now only uses two styles to finish its garments:Oeko-Tex Standard 100 approved agoya and mussel shell buttons or corozo nut buttons. They don’t use zips at all, because the fastenings “add waste and complexity to our circular design programme”.

In their open source plastic free handbook, Kowtow says that choosing these plastic-free alternatives “became an intriguing design challenge for our team, showcasing their creativity within limitations”.

Marilou Dadat, the brand’s creative director, explains that “in the traditional fashion industry you go to fabric or trim suppliers and you have hundreds and hundreds of options for buttons, it’s almost overwhelming. Having only these two, it’s so beautiful because they are actually all kind of unique, they are all from a shell or nut so they're gonna have this little grain that is different.

“Nature is beautiful already. Why would you mould the button from plant [materials] if you have this beautiful material already? We’ve done a shirt that’s black and decided to put on those shell buttons in their natural colour – the contrast and simplicity of that is beautiful.”

By focusing on the detailing already present in these natural materials, Dadat says they can fit many collections of clothing. “There are variations in material and sizes but that palette is enough to get out of every style. You have the matte aspect of the nut and then you have a more shiny aspect of the shell – both can be dyed to match the colour of the garment. You actually have lots of possibilities within that palette.

‍Celebrated for her keen eye for detail, the late Italian designer Elsa Schiaparelli also appreciated that even the smallest of design elements can be used as canvases with which to make a statement. The brand, now under the direction of Daniel Roseberry, reflected on her appreciation for fastenings this year, saying her buttons, “were not mere closures, but artistic collaborations and expressions of creativity."

Obviously a celebrated surrealist designer working within the luxurious Haute Couture space didn’t need to prioritise commercial or environmental considerations in the way that our local contemporary makers do. Schiaparelli’s buttons were often custom crafted in avant-garde materials such as leather, glass, metal alloys, and wire.

Nevertheless, it is refreshing to see that more than 50 years after Schiaparelli’s death, her brand has kept whimsical fastenings as part of its core design identity; recently in the form of celebrated oversized surrealist gold buttons that visually recall a mythologically focused 1935 collaboration with Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti.

As the brand says, a good character-filled button is a stamp sized reminder that “fashion is not just about garments, but an art form where creativity should defy bounds”.