regard@ttidcc.UUCP (Adrienne Regard) (04/23/85)
Geez, where do you get your history? Round about the time buttons were invented, there wasn't a sizeable nobility whose women didn't have to dress themselves. Most people were peasants, and didn't have anyone to button them up. The only persons who consistantly dressed anybody were women who dressed children, and children's clothes retained laces longer than adult clothes since laces were more reliable fasteners than buttons. The differentiation might have come from the time of the noble classes, but there were as many servants to dress men as women, so that argument doesn't make much sense. Louis (the Sun King) probably never buttoned a button in his life.