Buttons

[Jessica]

Hi girls 🙋🏼 I'm just starting to put together outfits for me to wear out and about.  I have known that women's clothing button opposite the way men's do.  I've tried on several blouses and a cute jacket.  I'm going to have to retrain my thought patterns to adapt to it.  It's not as easy.  I understand that it was done this way because women were dressed by others doing the buttoning.
Hugs, Jessica 🤷‍♀️

[MaryT]

Gentlemen were also once dressed by other people, usually valets or batmen.

I have an Arabic phrasebook published during the British colonial period.  One of the phrases was "Put on my trousers."  Another useful phrase was "Hit him with the stick."  I imagine that the latter phrase was used when a servant misunderstood the former phrase.

[Jessica]

Gentlemen were also once dressed by other people, usually valets or batmen.

I have an Arabic phrasebook published during the British colonial period.  One of the phrases was "Put on my trousers."  Another useful phrase was "Hit him with the stick."  I imagine that the latter phrase was used when a servant misunderstood the former phrase.

Hi Mary 🙋🏼 I had heard it described as the men dressed them selves, so the buttons on their clothes would be easy to button by yourself.  Whereas women of wealth, (money controls everything) would want styles that would be easy for the handmaiden do it for her.  It takes a relearned coordination to do it for me.
Smiles, Jessica 🤷‍♀️

[Laurie]

I like that idea of someone else dressing me for many reasons. I don't have good fashion sense at all.

Laurie

[MaryT]

I presume that the author of the 18th Century suicide note "All this buttoning and unbuttoning" did dress himself.

[Roll]

Gentlemen were also once dressed by other people, usually valets or batmen.

I know "batmen" must be an appropriate term in context, but now I have an image in my head of a row of people dressed as Batman dressing someone, and the image won't go away. (One of them on the end holding a towel like those creepy people who you have to tip in fancy bathrooms.)

[AshleyP]

I know "batmen" must be an appropriate term in context, but now I have an image in my head of a row of people dressed as Batman dressing someone, and the image won't go away

Don't tell Harley... 

[Sarah_P]

I know "batmen" must be an appropriate term in context, but now I have an image in my head of a row of people dressed as Batman dressing someone, and the image won't go away. (One of them on the end holding a towel like those creepy people who you have to tip in fancy bathrooms.)

Thank you! This is exactly what popped into my head, too! 
I first noticed the button thing with my first pairs of women's slacks (and since then a couple blouses). I've yet to find jeans that button that way, though.

[Jin]

I was often dressed in girl clothes early in life. So I just learned to button either way. But now that my fingers are less nimble, more twisted, I sometimes have issues with tiny buttons and tight button-holes.

[davina61]

I have a pair of jeans that button on the female side and a pair that the zip flap goes the opposite way to mens.