Decorative buttons can brighten up the dullest bag!
It doesn’t seem long ago that mums everywhere kept a well stocked ‘button box’ in their bedside cabinet or under the sink. When a garment came to the end of its life an industrial scale salvage operation would take place; everything that could be stripped and used again would be, and buttons were as prized as anything else.
It’s a sign of the times that this little ritual no longer takes place. These days, with the notion of something being ‘made to last’ an alien concept to the young, disposable fashion is all the rage. If a button falls off your new Primark cardigan (and it will!) then why bother replacing it? It only cost a fiver in the first place. No, these days you’d be hard pressed to find someone who looks after the spare buttons that come with a piece of clothing, let alone someone who keeps a box of them in reserve.
This is a shame, not only because it means that plenty of good items get shoved to the back of the wardrobe, never to be seen again, but because, as anyone who has a passion for modifying their own clothes will tell you, a well stocked button box is a key part of your arsenal.
But buttons don’t need to to hoarded simply for their utility. Whether you want to keep it simple, bright and cheerful (see left) or sophisticated and ambitious
they can also make an excellent decorative addition, brightening up the dullest of bags!
Take, as one example, the humble ‘bag for life’. Haberdashery enthusiasts are, by our very nature, a thrifty bunch. And yet that doesn’t mean we’re not occasionally absent minded. This can make food shopping a painful business when we get to the check out only to realise that we have left out trusty canvas bags at home, and will need to buy new ones. How many cupboards, up and down the nation, must there be full to bursting with dull-as-dishwater brown Hessian bags?!
Well, now you can do something about that. Modifying your bags for life will not only help to brighten them up (just take a look at this jazzy effort) but might even help you to remember to take them! After all, it would be a shame to put in all that work for nobody to see it, wouldn’t it?
So why not start hoarding, and maybe invest in a starter pack of decorative buttons today?