Small Home Gazette, Winter 2016

History Brief: “Zip Up Those Galoshes!”

In 1923, a woman could purchase a pair of rubber boots to protect her shoes and keep her feet warm and dry—with help from a newfangled fastener called a “zipper.”

The B. F. Goodrich Company had decided to use Gideon Sundback’s 1917 patented “separable fastener” on a new type of rubber boot commonly called galoshes. The mechanism was renamed the zipper because of the sound it made when closing the metal fastening elements.

At first, galoshes and tobacco pouches were the chief uses for this novel closure. It would be 20 years more before the fashion industry seriously promoted the use of zippers on garments.