Next time you button up your shirt, look closely at where the buttons sit—the small detail that still differentiates men’s shirts from women’s. Men’s shirts usually have buttons on the right, while women’s have them on the left. This odd tradition has origins tracing back to long-standing social customs.
Back when the wealthy women of the past did not dress themselves, their right-handed maids found buttons on the left easier to manage. Men, who more often dressed alone, favored buttons on the right side for practical reasons. Some fashion historians also believe men’s clothing was designed with battle readiness in mind, where the button side allowed quick weapon access.
As women’s fashion began taking on masculine traits in the 19th century, these button placements helped signify a garment’s gender, reinforcing societal expectations of men’s independence and women’s dependence.
British sexologist Havelock Ellis described the different buttoning as reflecting assumptions about women’s “weaker motor skills” in his 1894 writings, highlighting how fashion mirrored gender inequality.
Today, the left-right button configuration persists mostly by habit rather than necessity. Many people only recently discovered this “button differential,” with some questioning why it remains at all.
While some designers are experimenting with button placements to break gender norms, for now, this tiny design feature continues to remind us of fashion’s complex roles in history and culture.
