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I've heard that, somehow, TikTok is talking about women's clothing buttoning differently from men's, and the old myth that it was done for the convenience of women's maids. If you've been following me for more than a week you probably know that I'm going to say that that's wrong.
If you go back to the late 16th century, you'll find women in doublet/doublet-styled gowns that feature buttoning that's the same as men's - buttons on the wearer's right.
Generally, women didn't wear buttoning bodices much, particularly through the 17th century. But by the end of it, a masculine riding habit was a very fashionable outfit for the elite woman - and still, buttons on the right, just like men's.
And this keeps up in the 18th century. In both riding dress and compère-front gowns, you'll nearly always see the buttons on the female wearer's right side.
In the early 19th century, women didn't tend to wear gowns that buttoned in front, but outerwear did. The buttons could be on either side, but by the 1830s it was more common to see them on the wearer's left (like the earlier spencer below, the modern "standard" for women).
By the middle of the 19th century, it was the norm for women's bodices to fasten with buttons in front, and to do so with the buttons on the wearer's left.
So, simply from a logical standpoint, the idea that this is an issue of function doesn't work. Early Modern buttons on women's clothing were mostly high fashion and would have been more likely to have been done up by a maid than the universal 19thc ones.
I'll come out and say it: I don't KNOW why the shift occurred. Nobody does, and anybody who says they do know is over-confident. But ...
I do have a reasonable theory. The late 18th/early 19thc was a time of increasing emphasis on gender essentialism and differentiation. Separate spheres, angel in the house, Republican motherhood, etc. etc. etc.
It makes sense for buttons to fluctuate and then settle in a gendered way in order to make more of a difference between men's and women's clothing. (Again, we don't know this is true, but it makes a lot more sense with this timeline.)
There is a modern fascination with the idea of women being dressed by maids and men not being dressed by valets. It ties into that old image of the privileged woman being laced into her corset by a maid, often too tightly to breathe easily.
It contrasts to the independent poor woman who takes control of her own clothes, and the man at all levels of society. The gilded cage and all of that.
But women at all levels of society got help for the parts of their outfit they couldn't do up - whether from sisters, maids, fellow workers, and so on. It's not a symbol of repression, it shows their interconnectedness.
Buttons in the front, though? That's child's play.
