Technology
Zippers
In this episode, we explore the curious case of zippers and their surprising absence in Amish culture. Through conversations with community members, we uncover the complexities of modern technology ac...
Zippers
Technology •
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Interactive Transcript
Speaker A
I wanted to talk about zippers. May I just ask you some quick questions about zippers?
Speaker B
Okay.
Speaker A
Is that a weird thing to ask about?
Speaker B
Well, nobody else really asks about zippers, so.
Speaker A
So you are Amish, right?
Speaker B
Yes. You know, there's different types of Amish.
Speaker A
Lydia is Old Order Amish, but then there's also New Order Amish.
Speaker B
New Order Amish. We would have the Cyprus accent. We don't.
Speaker A
Why don't you wear zippers?
Speaker B
I guess because years ago, the older people didn't wear zippers. Too modern, I guess, for us or something.
Speaker A
But this is the part that confused me. Even though zippers were too modern, here we were talking on the phone. Granted, many members of Lydia's community keep their cell phones outside of their home, actually in a box, as though it's an outhouse.
Speaker B
And.
Speaker A
And Lydia only has access to a flip phone.
Speaker B
And I do not know how to use a smartphone.
Speaker A
Still, I did not understand how zippers were considered more modern, more of a disruption than talking on the phone.
Speaker B
Because I have to have this phone. Actually, the phones are more, how should I say, more immense than what they used to be.
Speaker A
In my ignorance, knowing pretty much nothing about the Amish, I assumed they were wholeheartedly devoting to just being frozen in time, as dedicated to being as simple as possible and living a completely pre industrial agrarian lifestyle. But that is not the whole story.
Speaker B
We're humans like everybody else and things change. Is the best way for me to explain it.
Speaker A
Ruth, another member of the Amish community, told me that she will, for example, ride in a car.
Speaker B
We drive in other people's cars, but we don't drive our own. We don't have license and we're not to be driving.
Speaker A
Ah, it's like living in New York City. That's what I do. A number of Amish have even decided that owning and riding E bikes is totally okay. And Ruth sews on a sewing machine. How high tech are you allowed to get with the sewing machines?
Speaker B
We go computerized.
Speaker A
Really?
Speaker B
Oh yeah.
Speaker A
All technologies aren't all entirely frowned upon. Some of the ones that have proven really valuable, really helpful for life have become adopted. And it's different for different sects and different communities, even for different individuals.
Speaker B
Well, you have to allow some people. If we all look like cookie cutters, it'll be a cult.
Speaker A
And so when it comes to zippers, there isn't actually any official stated doctrine in the Amish community.
Speaker B
I guess the best place for you to call would be the Amish Mennonite Heritage Center. Maybe they'll have some answers for you on that.
Speaker A
Okay.
Speaker C
The news media and movies and even the written material about the Amish is a line of bs. Sorry, really, it's just all bs. This is my work. This is what I do. I work with my people.
Speaker A
Markus Yoder is the executive director of the Behalt Amish and Mennonite Center. He was raised in this community, went out and got degrees from Ohio State and Yale. Then he came back. So he has one foot in the world of the Amish and he has the other foot in our world, the world of the English.
Speaker C
So even there, in calling anyone who isn't Amish, English, it's cultural, it's about language.
Speaker A
May I hear what Amish sounds like? Like, how would you say he started wearing zipper pants in Amish Altstadt Sippelhose?
Speaker C
It's a guy like of German.
Speaker A
So with his intimate knowledge of the community and the distinct advantage of being able to email, Marcus helped me out on Monday night.
Speaker C
I heard 444Amish people here, all Amish. Wow. I actually asked him, so why do you not like zippers and clothing here? Rub the urge a little bit. I think an important thing for people to understand is they're thinking, what will it do to our historic faith? What will it do to our families?
Speaker A
I mean, it's zippers. Come on. It's. I know essentially nearly every new technology has to be carefully considered for its effects on the entire community. The E bikes are a perfect example.
Speaker C
When they're wrestling with E bikes, they begin to say, what will this do to our families? If we get cars, we know that it will probably fracture our families because.
Speaker D
Mom will go all the way down, we go the other way, and we won't have dinner together.
Speaker C
We won't do things together.
Speaker A
E bikes, however, can't go the full distance of a car. They can be practical for getting around, but they still keep families in range of each other. So that's why some communities permit them.
Speaker C
So if faith is the kind of thirsty, unspoken fiddy is there, the requirement of family is almost equal in weight.
Speaker A
So what would zippers do to their families and their communities? This is what one Amish man told Marcus.
Speaker C
If you allow zippers, then you're going to begin to wrestle with fashion again. Like you're going to go out and you're going to get a jacket. Your neighbor has to wear his older over clothed with buttons.
Speaker A
Why would it be worth it? To stoke the desire for new clothes.
Speaker C
We eliminate a whole set of decisions that we have to Make.
Speaker A
It is just easier for the whole community to remain with what they have and for their parts. Lydia and Ruth do not mind. It is not a problem for them to go without zippers.
Speaker B
We don't use a lot of zippers. It's not the first thing that we go for.
Speaker A
So what do you use instead?
Speaker B
Either buttons or snaps.
Speaker A
Most Amish dresses are just pullover with no buttons or snaps or zippers at all.
Speaker B
I just drip it over my head just like I would a T shirt or something like that.
Speaker A
I can see how this would be manageable looking down at my own outfit. Right now I am wearing a button down shirt and drawstring pants. There's not a zipper in sight for me today. Is that ever annoying? Like when you're buttoning all the buttons. Do you ever wish you could just zip?
Speaker B
Well, sometimes I get disgusted with zippers because it doesn't want to work. Now if they do work, they're fine. But yeah, sometimes they don't want to work very well.
Speaker A
It's a good point. When a zipper doesn't want to work, the whole garment goes on strike. Like, do you recall when Emma Stone won an Oscar in 2024? This is how she began her acceptance speech. Oh boy, my dress is broken. The zipper on her strapless dress broke. Can you imagine? You just won an Oscar and that is the first thing on your mind that is so dangerously close to a nightmare and there's no way to fix it. You can't fix a zipper other than cutting the zipper out and putting a new zipper back in. It's not like a button where you can just sew it right there in the moment. Also, as a fledgling sewist, I find sewing zippers quite intimidating.
Speaker B
It just takes more talent to put a zipper in a piece of clothing than it does to go without.
Speaker A
So Lydia and Ruth and many other Amish reason why not just go without zippers. And meanwhile, for the rest of us, the zipper is the most common machine in our lives. We don't think of it as a machine, but that is what it is. It's a machine that is everywhere and we accept it. And yet we do not actually need it at all. It is technically superfluous. And for that reason it took such a long time after the invention of the zipper for it to actually get used. The adoption and proliferation of the zipper is an extremely unlikely story. And so truly the question that is more confusing than why the Amish never accepted zippers is why we, the English were ever did. After the break, why did Judson Whitcomb come up with the zipper.
Speaker D
Well, it's Whitcomb. Judson.
Speaker A
Whitcomb. Judson. Sorry.
Speaker D
That's okay. I knew that was a trick question, wasn't it? That's right.
Speaker A
I totally meant to do that. Yes. Professor Robert Friedel is so charming. I really like this guy.
Speaker D
I'm Robert Friedel. I am a historian of technology and science.
Speaker A
Professor Friedel wrote a book simply called An Exploration in Novelty.
Speaker D
But the nature of Invention has always been my key interest. I'm just really, really fascinated by why people invent things, how they invent things, and what they do with things once they've invented them.
Speaker A
And Whitcomb Judson wanted to invent stuff because he wanted to invent stuff.
Speaker D
He feels that to be an inventor is the greatest thing anybody could ever be. And this is the generation right after Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison. And they're still around, they're still very famous. And Wickham Judson wants to speculate about what can I do to become a great inventor. And he invents a whole host of stupid things. Oh, I shouldn't say that. But largely stupid things.
Speaker A
You can imagine Judson amassing a workshop full of wild contraptions for novelty, things that no one had asked for or needed. You had this great turn of phrase. You said it wasn't problem solving, it was problem seeking.
Speaker D
Right, exactly right. He just wanted to be an inventor. And this is what he came up with in 1891.
Speaker A
Judson makes the early, early precursor to what would one day become the zipper. But it looks nothing like the zipper.
Speaker D
This automatic hook and eye.
Speaker A
It's a very complicated contraption that hooks a series of spikes into a series of big, round metal hoops.
Speaker D
He said, now I've got it. I've got something that I'm sure will work.
Speaker A
It did not work.
Speaker D
The notion of the automatic hook, an eye bringing hook together with eyes and making it somehow mechanical, which, by the way, is an intrinsically bad idea. But okay. Trying to make that.
Speaker A
I mean, just because it's so dangerous.
Speaker D
Yeah, well, not. Well, we won't even go there.
Speaker A
Sure.
Speaker D
But just because it's mechanically stupid. I'm sorry.
Speaker A
It was a clunky device that truly no one had been looking for.
Speaker D
Buttons work fine, snaps work fine. They're all cheaper, they're all simpler. They're all very familiar to us. We haven't been sitting around complaining about them.
Speaker A
The task then, for salesmen of the automatic hook and eye is getting people to jettison buttons and snaps. Things that Are familiar, reliable, cheap and good in favor of something expensive, clunky, and ultimately not very good at Its.
Speaker D
One job that takes salesmanship of the first order, which is why it takes decades of very persistent, sometimes clever kind of salesmanship to make the thing go.
Speaker A
Who are they supplying at this point? Like, who's buying this stuff?
Speaker D
Yeah, well, the shockers out there really, I mean, I can't describe you any better. They're basically wonderful, fast talking, hustling salesmen out there who are going literally from town to town flying a few dozen of these things, which I emphasize nobody is looking for. Okay?
Speaker A
Really, they sell to some home sewers, maybe some general stores, if anyone just like try this instead of buttons.
Speaker D
And the ones that are really successful make a real point of never coming back to the same town twice because their devices really don't work very well. But apparently that is enough to keep this little factory in Hoboken going. Just enough so that they don't just throw in the towel.
Speaker A
And I cannot emphasize enough how long this period goes on. This era of the shitty, somewhat scammy automatic hook and eye lasts for 20 years.
Speaker D
It took about 20 years from Judson's first design until we get the design that we know of as a zipper. Think of how much longer that is than say the Wright brothers took to invent an airplane. You know, 20 years is a long time.
Speaker A
The airplane took four years.
Speaker D
The commitment of these people is such that they keep pushing.
Speaker A
But Whitcomb Judson himself was never an engineer. He was an inventor guy. He had other ideas. So Judson moves on.
Speaker D
By the first years of the 20th century, he's beginning to fade out.
Speaker A
So Judson gets older, he has other inventions, he moves on. He leaves New Jersey. He passes on the technical direction of his factory to a man named Peter Aronson. Just remember that last name, Aronson. That's gonna be important in this next part.
Speaker D
And then we have a breakthrough 20 years after the first effort.
Speaker A
Yes. 20 years into the strange story of the invention that will become the zipper is a breakthrough. And at its heart is a love story.
Speaker D
Gideon Sembach is a wonderful story from start to finish. Okay?
Speaker A
I love it. Gideon Sundbeck is a brilliant young Swedish engineer.
Speaker D
We forget that in the early 20th century Sweden was one of the poorest countries in Europe. There was really not a lot of opportunity for a well trained person.
Speaker A
Stundback comes to the United States.
Speaker D
He finds a Swedish American community, if you want to be romantic about it, within the site of the Statue of Liberty in Hoboken. Hoboken happened to be where the automatic hook and eye factory is. And they need an engineer. And Gideon Schambach is not actually interested.
Speaker A
Of course, he was not really into this scammy down on its luck 20 year old company still trying to sell automatic hook and eye fasteners that didn't really work.
Speaker D
He's looking more for something in the electrical business that's really the cutting edge. That's the future. This is around 1900, 1905, that sort of thing.
Speaker A
But Gideon checks it out. He goes to the automatic hook and eye factory and he does get automatically hooked. He sees the most beautiful woman he.
Speaker D
Has ever seen, Peter Aronson daughter Elvira.
Speaker A
And Gideon is like, who is she?
Speaker D
And he is totally smitten. I mean, boy, did he have it bad. Okay, so he basically says, yeah, sure, I'll join up. Let's see what I can do.
Speaker A
And so Gideon Sundback suddenly finds himself in the automatic hook and eye business. He's in this busted novelty company which he really would have only joined for love.
Speaker D
And he beats his head against the wall for years trying to get this device, which as I said, has some really intrinsic flaws in it, to work.
Speaker A
So Somback comes up with a new new version around 1908 called the Pleco. It still puts hooks through loops, although the loops are smaller and closer now. But essentially it still sucks. I mean, Professor Friedel showed me one of the early instruction manuals and yes, the Pleco needed instructions. Look at this. They're so.
Speaker D
And the direction for using. Go on for several paragraphs.
Speaker A
Totally.
Speaker D
Okay, so this is a wonderful illustration of the fact that this really is not a good idea.
Speaker A
You had to take the Pleco fastener off when you wanted to wash a garment, otherwise it would get rust into the whole laundry. It was a really clunky device still.
Speaker D
And the fast talking salesmen run around the country selling pleco fasteners.
Speaker A
We consider it the greatest invention of the age. And so does everyone else who has examined it or tested its merit by accident. Actual use sales material said and that.
Speaker D
Keep the company going on a very small scale, but steady enough.
Speaker A
And in early advertisements for the Pleco, skirts, gloves and boots were modeled by the beautiful, smiling Elvira Aronson.
Speaker D
Elvira and Gideon get married in Hoboken.
Speaker A
Gideon had officially married into the business.
Speaker D
Elvira and Gideon are married for a few years. Elvira becomes pregnant and the factory is plugging along. But the salesmen are running out of gullible people.
Speaker A
So Sundback really needs to get to work on this playcoat thing. He's very invested in this now. He's like, I'm about to have a family to support.
Speaker D
He obviously knows the failings of the.
Speaker A
Device, but he's like, okay, what can I actually do to make this thing work?
Speaker D
The picture that we get is Gideon some back plugging away in his little workshop in Hoboken, where it takes a lot of effort just to keep the machinery going for this device.
Speaker A
Okay, what can I do to make this thing good?
Speaker D
But then there is a very tragic element of a story that dips in. Tragic and romantic.
Speaker A
When Elvira gives birth to their daughter Ruth. Elvira barely survives childbirth, and only a.
Speaker D
Few days later, she dies. And you can imagine that this is a tragedy of the first order for Gideon.
Speaker A
Gideon was, in fact, so distraught, he could hardly face his own newborn daughter. When Gideon is mourning the loss of his wife, he sends his daughter away, back to Sweden.
Speaker D
In his despondency, he basically threw himself back into his workshop.
Speaker A
In his despair, Gideon Sundbeck fixated on this fastener. I imagine him sort of half crazed, his shirt sleeves rolled up, seeking one modicum of control, just one way to make something right, because he had ended up here for her. All of this was for Elvira. He wasn't going to just leave it all behind. It wasn't going to be for naught. It was gonna work, dammit.
Speaker D
He looked back at the Placo, and he realizes that one of the reasons why the earlier fasteners didn't work is that the individual element, the hooks and eyes, were too large and there were too few of them.
Speaker A
There were these big gaps between each loop. So if one got undone, which it did easily, then there was this big hole. So Sundbeck thought, now, if I could.
Speaker D
Make teensy, tiny, teeny weeny hooks and eyes, I might try that. But that pretty much impossible.
Speaker A
So Sundbach throws away the hook and loop design altogether. No hooks, no loops.
Speaker D
He then comes up with the key idea, which is basically the scoop.
Speaker A
There are lots of ways a modern zipper works, but one of the ways that we still use, that Sundback came.
Speaker D
Up with, you'll need a magnifying glass.
Speaker A
For this, is that scoops fit into nibs.
Speaker D
It will stay fastened even when it's flat, even when it comes to tied in the knots. It's an astonishing design.
Speaker A
Sundbach did it. He cracked it. And so he announced the name of his new device.
Speaker D
The Hookless Hooker.
Speaker A
The Hookless Hooker. That's Its full name. That's what the zipper was called. So is it fair to say that the hookless hooker is the same invention that would become the zipper? That is. But that nickname zipper hasn't happened yet. So the company's name is changed to the Hookless fastener company, and it introduces the improved design of the hookless hooker around 1915. And this hooker is expensive.
Speaker D
Now, 35 cents may not sound like much, but you could buy a perfectly decent shirt for 35 cents. Okay, so it's an expensive proposition.
Speaker A
The salespeople for the hookless hooker are continuing to have a preposterously hard time even though this device actually works now.
Speaker D
And so they talk about going into the department store, they talk about going to the tailors, leaving two or three, oh, can I get you to try it? And the tailor comes and say, look, it takes me five times as much time to put in as a set of buttons. Does it cost me five times as much to purchase? And I haven't got anybody who's asking for it. So you can see what a difficult sales job they had.
Speaker A
Also, even if this is an objectively interesting and good invention, ultimately it has to do with clothing and accessories, which means it has to do with, with style.
Speaker D
And we may be in favor of being contemporary and cutting edge, but when it's our clothing, we are not necessarily so daring and wanting to be out there on the cutting edge.
Speaker A
There's something about wearing technology that is weird. Like, okay, when Google Glass was introduced, right? It not only had to work well and function as a product, it had to look cool. Like, part of its failing was that it was dorky. Once technology enters fashion, it becomes part of self expression. And in the case of the hookless hooker, people didn't know what to make of this thing yet. It was this weird machine. It was novel. It's like, okay, what is it saying about me if I wear this?
Speaker D
So they then had to find niche markets. And this is also an important story to anybody who has a crazy invention they want to sell. Find the niche markets that would allow you to charge a premium price.
Speaker A
So one of the first niche markets for the hookless hooker is in tobacco pouches, which made sense. You can get your tobacco fix more quickly. And it's also low stakes because you're not like, wearing it on your torso and you're not trusting the hooker with your whole garment.
Speaker D
If the closure of a tobacco pouch fails, you just end up with some loose tobacco leaves not great embarrassment on the stage.
Speaker A
Right?
Speaker D
That's how they Slowly begin to get people to try it out.
Speaker A
And then another early use was gloves, which it's hard to imagine now, were completely ubiquitous. Everybody wore gloves and everyone was like, oh, now that you mention it, they are sort of annoying to button.
Speaker D
Think about it for a second. Closing buttons on a glove, right, is intrinsically difficult, okay? So you get people to appreciate the little virtue of something that works a bit more easily than the buttons.
Speaker A
And another example of this was in rainproof rubber boots made by the B.F. goodrich Rubber Company.
Speaker D
They start putting it into their rubber shoes. And as a way of distinguishing these high tech galoshes, the name of the.
Speaker A
Boot was the zipper.
Speaker D
They adopted the term zipper boots as a way of saying how easy it was to put them on and take them off.
Speaker A
These zipper boots were very popular in 1927. They accounted for 70% of the business of the hookless fastener company.
Speaker D
And the term zipper boot really caught.
Speaker A
On by the late 1920s, after the fashion for the zipper boot went away, the name stuck to the fastener. To the point where in 1939, the hookless fastener company itself started to call its own products zippers. And the company would soon change its own name to Talon Inc. But even though the zipper was now a known entity that worked with a catchy name, the zipper was still a hard sell.
Speaker D
It had certain virtues, but not enough to get people to abandon their buttons and their snaps.
Speaker A
So Talon was like, what about kids clothes? Maybe we market zippers as a way for kids to dress themselves easily.
Speaker D
And so they actually got child psychologists to look into the virtues of self help clothing. And if they could be independent, independently open and close their garbage, then wouldn't they be much better off?
Speaker A
Zippers will make kids stronger and happier and more self sufficient.
Speaker D
But that's just one of a whole host of campaigns that are going on to try to find the market that will work. There is no great breakthrough.
Speaker A
It's just little product by little product. Talon slowly convinced the general public that this invention, the zipper, is good, trustworthy, and maybe in fact beneficial.
Speaker D
Finally, in the 1930s, when the zipper began to get some market success, there were some fashion designers who picked up on the zipper and they decided, I'm not going to hide this. This is the latest thing, this latest.
Speaker A
Thing that was secretly many, many decades old. But notably, Elsa Schiaparelli covered a gown in zippers.
Speaker D
She had garment by the late 30s that are just festooned with zippers, I believe is what one of the magazine writers said.
Speaker A
The zippers seemed to be Gaining such traction that Gideon Sundvak felt ready to face life again. He asked for his daughter Ruth to come back to America.
Speaker D
Gideon had her come back after several years in Sweden, still a young girl, once the zipper had become successful.
Speaker A
Professor Robert Friedel actually met Ruth when.
Speaker D
I was doing this research in the early 1990s. She was still hale and hearty, doing quite well, and was a delightful person.
Speaker A
And then, just as things were looking up, Sandebak's patent on the zipper ran out.
Speaker D
Once the patent protection had run out, by the late 1930s, people were setting up little zipper factories all over the place. It's really quite amazing.
Speaker A
There were a lot of machinists who made chain machines for Talon. And then when their patent ran out, these machinists would make a chain machine for just about anybody. It became quite easy to just set up a little zipper factory.
Speaker D
You could set up a little shop in your attic in Brooklyn and start turning out zippers.
Speaker A
And the floodgates opened. Zippers were suddenly everywhere.
Speaker D
There was this fascinating transition, the crossover period in the 1940s.
Speaker A
A perfect example was actually a survey taken at Princeton's alumni weekend of what.
Speaker D
They had in the flies of their trousers.
Speaker A
No way.
Speaker D
Oh, yes. The old people, the people who graduated in 1935 or 1940 or earlier were still using buttons, Whereas the more modern undergraduates were much more likely to have zippers in the flies of their trousers.
Speaker A
Metal was woven with cloth. This cold machine touched skin. Textiles were integrated with technology.
Speaker D
It broke open certain inhibition by making the opening and closing of the fastener into something that was so apparent, so in your face at times. One of the things that's fascinating to me is how the zipper became a metaphor for guiltless sex, quick sex for allure.
Speaker A
Zippers became a way to hint that clothes could be removed as quickly and effortlessly as they were put on. Zip me up. Can you undo my zipper? Can you zip me up?
Speaker D
Yeah.
Speaker A
Zippers became part of clothes that pull on and rip off of boots that don't need time to lace and bags that zip open to get through security and zip closed to get back on the plane of cases that quickly release laptops and secure them back in place.
Speaker D
They're in our backpack, they're in our handbags, they're in our knapsacks. They're in our luggage.
Speaker A
Zippers are part of a certain fast paced, uninhibited life. So I totally get why certain orders of Amish would be like, this is not even worth it. But this little invention to me is this Unlikely miracle. I can't believe it exists at all. That it was ever made and that it was believed in long enough to the point where it's still here and working. It would have been all too easy for it to die off at any point in its history. And now zippers have become more and more important. They actually have vital, dire jobs to do, which I'll get to. But look around you. Look at all these little zippers, all these little machines flashing. Now look closer, closer down at your jeans or at your bag. Look at the tab of your zipper pull. There's a very good chance it's inscribed with three mysterious letters. Y, K, K. If you look at.
Speaker D
A zipper today, you're more likely to find YKK stamped on that zipper than anything else.
Speaker A
The reason why, after the break.
Speaker D
Testing, testing. Can you hear me? Everybody here? Okay. Okay.
Speaker A
I was led inside an absolutely enormous warehouse where a mysterious thrumming sound was so loud I could barely hear Marty Timms, the vice president of manufacturing at ykk. And he was talking into a microphone.
Speaker D
The back corner here. So we'll make our way back there and then come around.
Speaker A
I love how none of these guys are wearing earplugs. And there it was, the source of the sound and perhaps the very source of the zipper on your jeans.
Speaker D
Mountain and casting areas starts here.
Speaker A
A furnace emitted a molten river of metal that splashed around like water. It's a dramatic amount of fire. I have never seen fire flare lemon yellow before. It's like electric yellow during the summertime.
Speaker D
People don't like to hang around here.
Speaker A
This plant is in Macon, Georgia, where it is already hot. Add to it this furnace, which is 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, melting copper with ink of zinc, which together make brass. So a pair of jeans you own may have a zipper that came from this infernal goo.
Speaker E
There's only three factories in the world for YKK too, surfacing the 72 countries where we are.
Speaker A
That's Jessica Cork, president of communications at ykk, and she's going to help explain the big mystery. What does ykky Kaisha.
Speaker B
Do you speak Japanese?
Speaker A
I do.
Speaker E
So Yoshida is Mr. Yoshida. Tadao Yoshida, the founder of the company. And then Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha is basically like Industries Limited. So, yeah, named after the founder of the company.
Speaker A
So how did the zipper, this all American invention, get completely taken over by Japan? And then in that case, why do they still bother having a factory here? Like, is it pity? These are two different questions. First, this Tadao Yoshida character Who is he?
Speaker E
Back in 1934, this kid was 26 years old. He was actually working for a company that sold chinaware.
Speaker A
Tadaoyoshida had gone to Shanghai to import chinaware, but the company he worked for ended up closing because there was a war breaking out between China and Japan.
Speaker E
But that company had a side zipper business just on the side. And so the founder of that company that ended up going under, he really liked Tada Yoshida, hungry, working really hard, and he ended up saying, look, just take the zippers and see if you can make something of it.
Speaker A
The zipper business again was pretty easy to get into, especially after Sunback's patent ran out in the 30s. You just got your hands on a chain machine and boom.
Speaker E
There was lots of zipper companies in Japan at the time, and that was primarily to service the Westernization of clothing too, because it's not so long before that people were wearing kimono that don't have a zipper in it.
Speaker A
With the boom in the zipper business, Yoshida realized that most of the zippers, including his own, were pretty low quality.
Speaker E
At one point, almost half of his inventory was being returned, and that wasn't acceptable to him. And his dream always was to sell to the Americans and to sell abroad.
Speaker A
Even after his fledgling zipper factory was completely bombed by The Americans in 1945.
Speaker E
38 years old, has to start all over again, start from scratch, rebuild the whole factory.
Speaker A
But Yoshida's fierce devotion to quality control.
Speaker D
Only strengthened, and slowly over the decade, from the 50s on into the 70s, built up this astonishing reputation for a firm that became known as YKK.
Speaker A
Professor Friedel said that YKK's reputation was what made the company his quality controls.
Speaker D
Basically ran everybody else into the ground with a zipper.
Speaker A
Quality and quality assurance is everything. Ask Emma Stone. My dress is broken.
Speaker D
If you are a garment maker. Levi Strauss, for example, huge zipper consumer. Yeah, you want to make sure that that is not going to be a problem. And so Yoshida basically turned that reputation for quality into an absolutely dominant position in the world zipper industry, even beating.
Speaker A
Out the originator of the hookless hooker itself. So what happened to Talon?
Speaker D
Talon is a Rust Belt fable. I'm convinced the combination of just falling asleep on the job and resting on the rolls, just figuring out, where's Talon? We will always be here.
Speaker A
Talon died a long, slow death, finally going out of business for good in the 1990s. But I do always love looking for Talon zippers in vintage clothes from the era before YKK came to town. When did YKK come to the States?
Speaker E
1960. The company started to expand overseas 1959. So we were actually in New Zealand and India first, but New York was third.
Speaker A
In the 1960s, New York was the heart of the schmatta business. It was the place to be.
Speaker E
When we established YKK in New York, 95% of apparel was manufactured in the United States. That was all of our customers.
Speaker A
How did the YKK factory end up in Japan?
Speaker E
Georgia blue jeans, late 1990s. We're looking at the major brand name jeans manufacturers. And you can understand exactly why our company's located in Georgia.
Speaker A
In the 1990s, a lot of denim was still being produced in the American South.
Speaker E
We, like, had a pipeline shipping out every single day to these jeans manufacturers in Macon. Growing, growing, growing. But where it stops is right around 2000 and 2001. Brands were shifting overseas. The next slide I'm going to show you, I believe is from 2006. Can you guess how many. Can you guess how many jeans manufacturers are still located in the United States?
Speaker A
Yes. Guess how many jeans manufacturers were still in the US in 2006? 0.
Speaker E
0. They had completely gone in that amount of time.
Speaker A
So in that fiery molten furnace that I saw, YKK forges the brass for zippers that will be mostly exported.
Speaker D
Now, we still do have brass business because we still send brass chain and brass sliders to Central America and Mexico.
Speaker A
But a lot of our domestic business is gone. So this is the part that I did not understand. Why would YKK keep this factory here? Why make this product in this country where clothes haven't been made for a long time and labor is expensive? And we're talking like before all this tariff nonsense, of course. I wondered if this was some sort of vanity property for ykk, like Hercules wearing the pelt of the lion he conquered. You know, like, if this was like a symbolic factory, why stay here?
Speaker E
Right?
Speaker B
So why stay?
Speaker E
Well, let me show you one more other slide.
Speaker A
Right. YK USA had to be strategic and pivot to new markets, really looking at.
Speaker E
What companies are going to stay here in the United States.
Speaker A
Even though I've been talking a lot about jeans and clothes and fashion, the apparel market is not really the priority at the YKK factory in Macon.
Speaker E
Now they're making products like this where if this fails, that person's gonna die.
Speaker A
This factory specializes in performance zippers.
Speaker D
Every zipper that we manufacture that's airtight, watertight, because it is life and limb.
Speaker A
Zippers that can keep disease out of chembio suits and keep water out of wetsuits. Zippers that are in the words of Marty Timms, 100% tested.
Speaker D
And what I mean by that is actually put into a water bath and it is tested to make sure that it does not leak. We also check to see how many times it will actually zip and unzip before it fails.
Speaker A
They make quick release zippers for parachutes, fireproof zippers made of Nomex, also used.
Speaker D
In firefighting, NASCAR racing, any type of electrical workers.
Speaker A
But okay, that fireproof zipper that Marty was showing me, yes, it's used in firefighting and NASCAR racing, but it has a primary use and it's one of the big reasons why this company is still here in the United States. This was made for the military.
Speaker D
Yes.
Speaker A
And it's on every military uniform for the most part.
Speaker D
But yes, this would be considered a military zipper.
Speaker A
A steady amount of output from this factory is for the United States military thanks to the Berry Amendment.
Speaker E
Berry Amendment, that's huge for us.
Speaker A
Put very simply, the Berry Amendment requires that food, clothing, fabrics, fibers and yarns for the American military need to be made domestically.
Speaker E
The government mandates that the textiles that are used for the US Military has to stay, may be manufactured here in.
Speaker A
The US it's considered a matter of national security. Right, because we could go to war with some country that manufactures our military uniforms or any aspect of them. These clothes are covered with vital life saving technology, technology like zippers. The Barry Amendment is arguably one of the few reasons America has had clothing manufacturing anymore at all. Contracts with the Department of Defense help allow companies like YKK to stay here and to work closely with other specialized.
Speaker E
Sectors as well as things like the outdoor industry, automotive industry. You're going to see lots of stuff that go into cars.
Speaker A
Yes, yes, yes. YKK makes a lot of internal parts for car seats that you never see, which is fascinating. But did you hear that Jessica mentioned the outdoor industry? Another branch of clothing manufacturer that not unlike the military, is distinctly interested in cutting edge, potentially life saving, all terrain clothing technology.
Speaker C
Functionally, you've got arc' Teryx or even Nike saying, hey, what can we do that's something special? Where can we take it next? Where can we go next with it?
Speaker A
Jim Reed, the president of YKK Corporation of America, says that a lot of their innovation now comes from these outdoor companies. They are the ones who typically drive development.
Speaker C
Patagonia is great on the sustainability level, as many others are, but that's just a good example. They're always pushing.
Speaker A
All sorts of outdoor companies are asking YKK to make zippers that are repairable, made out of the same material as the jacket itself biodegradable, all sorts of new things. It's this interesting dynamic that a lot of companies have where the military provides a degree of financial security and the outdoor industry provides a sort of inspiration and motivation. And although the zipper might have been at the beginning of integrating technology into our clothing, all kinds of garments are endeavoring to make our lives easier, more efficient, more convenient and healthier. There's one for odor control. Here's one for reflection and shininess. At the Functional Fabric Fair in Portland, Oregon, I walked through rows and rows and rows of booths, all pedaling swatches of fabric that could defend against UV rays, wick sweat, deflect, rain, wrinkle resistant, high weight molecular polyethylene, stretchy too.
Speaker E
Vapor permeability, customizable in terms of color.
Speaker A
Size, whatever you need. Textile mills and factories hawked squares of fabrics that seemed capable of almost anything. And representatives from all the major outdoor companies were there, going from booth to booth, taking meetings and touching the materials that would play the starring roles in their next season's jackets and anoraks. And of course, among all the booths was none other than ykk. So a lot of the stuff you saw on Makim would be different from this. This is intended more for like rain, snow, ski rather than like submersible and like ykk. A lot of these vendors at Functional Fabric Fair, at least the ones that are Barry Amendment compliant and have a factory in the United States, have the same dual purpose. They serve both the outdoor industry and the military.
Speaker C
We service the military.
Speaker A
You don't get them from the military.
Speaker D
Yes.
Speaker A
Oh, you do?
Speaker D
Yeah.
Speaker A
This is military.
Speaker D
Made in the U.S. yes.
Speaker C
Bulletproof vests, blast plates for tanks, things like that.
Speaker A
The next time you're looking at an outdoor clothing company's website, just search the word tactical. They might have a specialty line for the military. And it makes sense. I mean, even the zipper was adopted early on by the military.
Speaker D
They begin to adopt the zipper for the flying suits which have very long closures.
Speaker A
The military does seem to pop up in some way, manner or form in almost every single story I've ever done. But the quest for high tech clothing in the United States has been egged on by this ongoing and long running tango between the military and the outdoor industry. So that is why I've spent two years exploring the intersection of the military and the outdoor industry and how all of our clothing became performance wear. That will be the next season of articles of interest coming this fall. Stay tuned. Special thanks this episode to my friends and fellow fashion journalists Bliss Foster and Daniella Corey, who make one of the select few Patreons I actually subscribe to. Their Runway coverage is incredible. Thanks also to the fabulous Davia Nelson and to Stacey Hoover for being my gateway to the Amish community. Little plug for Stacy. She runs a bed and breakfast in New Orleans called Wonderland, where artists can stay for $50 a day. I want to go. Check it out for me, please. Of course. Thanks to Alison Barringer for editing this script. It's such an honor to work with her. She makes a podcast called Bodies and actually both of our shows were listed by Time magazine as some of the best podcasts of all time, which is so cool. I don't know. This feels like a podcast super group to be able to be edited by Alison. So check out Bodies also. And this episode, it was a special treat to work with the best engineer in the world, John Dolore. Lately I've been mixing and mastering the episodes by myself. Maybe if you're a real audio head, you're like, yeah, no, I can tell. But it was really fun to get to work with John. This one, the Zipper song is by iata. All the other music is usually by Ray Royal. The theme songs are by Sesame. For images of early rudimentary zippers and updates on the next impending season, you know where to go. It's articlesofinterest.substack.com.
Speaker D
Radiotopia.
Speaker A
From PRX.