Women's blouse buttons are on the left, making it easier for their maids to dress them and their lovers to undress them.
Over 3,000 years ago, during the Bronze Age, the first buttons made their debut. While recognisably buttons, Bronze Age man didn't fasten anything with them, but simply wore them for decoration.
Ancient Greeks ran the button through a little loop of thread and thereby created a use for the button, alongside the pin or the brooch, to keep garments together.
By the middle of the 1300s tailors produced garments with row upon row of buttons with matching buttonholes. The church denounced them as the devil's snare, referring to the ladies in their button-fronted dresses.
Dressing and undressing became a chore, but created a niche for the employment of professional dressers.
In 1520 reports tell of a meeting where King Francis I of France, his clothing bedecked with some 13,600 buttons, met King Henry VIII of England, similarly weighed down with buttons.
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