Textile Museum, PARIS!

We explored the Textile Museum, just by the Louvre and we had a speaker who told us about the latest exhibition about buttons and how they had first been introduced and the development and impacted they have had on our daily lives to date.

The talk was very interesting and I learnt a lot about buttons and how they can be highly decorative on a garment and show wealth. Many button designs had motifs and carvings on them which looked very creative and stylish.

The different information I gained while on the tour of the exhibition included:
- Buttons were originally used as functional pieces which were founded in Pakistan in the 17th Century. 

- Buttons within the 17th century were only priviledged by men, as at the time, it showed wealth with matching embroidery while women still wore corsets with ribbon and hooks. This didnt change for the next 100 years!

- The two materials which were used to create buttons in the 18th Century were called Silver and Goldsmith. Embroidery was first used on garments and then transferred on to buttons.

- Within the 19th Century, womens garments started to be influenced by menswear. During the industrial revolution (1760 - 1860), a typical man would wear dark clothes with a white mother of pearl button due to the steam and dirty environment they would be in.

- Art Nouveau; an Artist Movement during the early 1890s was highly influenced on buttons, then fabric and pattern designs. Sonia Delaney was also a button and fabric designer of the time. 

- Futurism was introduced which reflected on the fashion between both the First and Second World War which machinery and buckles were developed. 

- Lucien Weingott was the creator of the fossil button collection which looked very effective and reflected my theme very well. Buttons were highly influenced towards fabric patterns between 1920 and 1925. 

- Rousselet button showing the mother of pearl was designed in 1930, which inspired design in pastel colour palettes with fabric underneath.  

- Jean Clemen was a button designer who created a collection with reflected stones in the 1930s. Wedgewood, fossils and landscape buttons were also very popular at the time aswell.

These images below show the different button collections which I really liked, embellished fabrics and highly embroidered designer pieces from Coco Chanel with the use of buttons. Buttons usually made an outfit and showed a statement that you were a higher class; nowadays buttons are on most, if not all clothes for both men and women. This show nowadays there is an equal society and people can wear would they like; reflecting their individuality and personality.