Essay About Zippers

13. APPAREL ACCESSORIES AND SUPPORTING MATERIALS

13.1 Closures

Closures or Fasteners are normally used to make permanent and semi-permanent attachment between materials, as well as joints that can be opened and closed, and purely functional as well as decorative sometimes (Abernathy & Dunlop 1999).

13.1.1 Zippers ‘Zipper’ was introduced in the year 1893 at the Chicago World's Fairthen with the name of 'Clasp Locker'. Initially, during 1930s zippers were elements in children clothing harmonizing them for aiding children to dress up quickly and by themselves. Zippers came into public interest in 1937 through the French fashion designers who utilized them on men’s trousers.

13.1.1.1 Objectives of a zipper

Zippers may:

 increase or decrease the size of an opening to allow or restrict the passage of objects, as in the fly of trousers or in a pocket.



It run on two coils on either side of the fabric tape. There are two types of coils zippers; one is the spiral coil zipper, with a cord running inside the coil and other one is in the ladder form called ‘Ruhrmann type’.

• Invisible Zippers – It has teeth at the back side of the tape and the colour of the teeth normally matches with the garment color. The slider gives an invisible appearance. These zippers are normally coil zippers and are mainly utilized for in skirts and other dresses.

• Metallic Zippers - These kinds of zippers are mostly found in jeans. It is made of stainless steel, brass, zinc, nickel alloy or aluminum. The metal pieces are molded into the shape of teeth and are put in a tape at regular intervals. They could be coloured in any color to match with the garment.

• Plastic molded Zippers – It is like metal zippers excluding the fact that it is made of plastic material. These kinds of zippers can be made in variety of color of plastic to go with the product. Polyethylene resins and especially polyacetal resins are used to make plastic