Ok, that’s a bulky title. Lemme splain. I’m sure there’s an answer out there.
Pants zippers are simple. You zip down to open the fly, you zip up to close it.
Only problem is when you’ve got a pair of jeans that’ve been around a little while, and that zipper falls prey to the claws of gravity, and it falls on its own.
(I suspect most guys who have their flies undone didn’t forget to zip up after doing their business - the thing just fell on its own.)
So how come the pants zipper is made to zip UP to close? If it was made the other way, it would be sooooo much easier.
But you’d have to “thread” the zipper yourself (like a jacket zipper where you have to stick the little metal end into the metal bit that connects the teeth), and I’ve had a lot of that little metal bit going bad so you couldn’t get it stuck into the connector bit. Otherwise, if it were pre-stuck (like the down-up zippers in pants) but at the top, you couldn’t get your pants on.
As zippers are now made, they stay together at the bottom, no need to line up the different sides. If it zipped down, you would need to insert one side of the zipper into the clasp (?) before you zipped.
IMHO, it wouldn’t be worth the effort, and it would be more likely to misalign and jam.
If pants were made to zip down to close instead of up you’d be, in effect, sewing the zipper on upside down. You’d defeat one of the purposes of a zipper which is to allow extra room when putting on one’s pair of pants. In other words, you’d have a button, the part of the zipper that sealed (for lack of a much better word) and then the opening created by the zipper (when it’s unzipped). I don’t know about you, but I need the extra room that’s created when a conventional zipper is unzipped when putting on my pants.
OK, this post makes no sense to no one but me but I decided to submit it anyway.
I don’t think worn zippers open due to the force of gravity, but due to lateral pressure placed on the zipper, ie. your pants stretching. In fact, if you don’t “lock” some zippers by turning the tab down flat, you can open them by pulling on the material around them. I would guess that a lot of cases of open flys come about by not locking the tab - particularly on the type of metal zipper you tend to get on jeans. The finer toothed nylon zippers on some types of pants aren’t as prone to this.
With your suggestion, you would have to “lock” the zipper by turning the tab UP rather than down, which seems more prone to it becoming unlocked.
I don’t think it would confer a lot of benefit, and it would sure take some getting used to.
Actually, this came to me when I was trying to unlock the dadblasted thing. Sometimes the tab of the zipper gets stuck wayyyyyyyy up top there, and there I am, trying to fish it out like an ersatz booger or something. God forbid if someone walked into the bathroom at work while I was doing that. I usually wind up pushing the belt up a bit, allowing me more room.
Juanita, I can’t speak for the zippers in women’s pants, but for us males, we use that zipper for… ah… escape. Not extra room.
And while I appreciate the whole issue of threading the zipper, why can’t the zipper in pants just be prethreaded from the top down? It’s not like you can’t zip up a jacket while hanging upside down.
If you unzipped upwards, without the two sides of the zipper separating completely at the top, you couldn’t get your jeans on or off. You don’t just unzip to take a leak.
Try a little experiment to see if you indeed do need the extra room created by the zipper in it’s unzipped position. Leave your pants zipped and them put them on. If you are successful, then you will need a belt and/or suspenders to hold the dadgummed things at waist level because your hips are slimmer than your butt (and don’t get me started about the current fashion trend of wearing oversized pants hanging around your knees!) :eek:
As for having to thread the zipper to get it started if it were inverted, you better make sure you’ve got plenty of available room in those jeans before trying such a thing. During such times as snug fitting jeans are fashionable it becomes readily apparent that it’s a good thing the zipper is already started at the bottom or you’d never get the blasted things zipped!
If the pants couldn’t open at the waist, you couldn’t get them on over your hips.
One way to allow waist-opening with a zipper is for the zipper to close going down. This would necessitate lining up a starting tab with its slot every time the pants were put on. That adds complextiy and bother to the process, with the only advantage being that gravity would keep the zipper closed.
The other way to do it is the conventional closes-going-up method. To keep the zipper from falling down, the zipper is designed to lock itself in place when laid flat against the teeth. Problem solved. This method also allows one to intentionally open the zipper a portion of its travel, which is helpful when one’s gut expands after a big meal.
If a zipper is falling down, either the tab hasn’t been set to the lock position (operator error), or the lock is worn to the point of not functioning. I don’t recall seeing a lock get that worn, though I imagine it’s possible.
Bottom line–the conventional method poses less problems and annoyance than the proposed “upside down” method.
Also, if the fly zipper isn’t part of the system for opening the pants to put them on, as it is now, some other arrangement would have to be made, which would probably increase the cost of manufacture, not to mention being really wierd - you might have to have another zipper or set of buttons to open up the pants. For proper access, the fly HAS to open darn near to the top of the pants unless you are wearing “old guy” pants up somewhere around your navel, so it might as well also serve to help you put the garment on.
Aside from getting your pants off and on, I don’t think a zipper that zips down will solve the problem and may in fact exacerbate it.
I don’t believe it’s gravity that makes the zipper come down. I suspect it’s tension that causes it to separate at it’s weakest point, the opening.
If the zipper opened at the bottom, I think any tension from a wide legged stance or long stride may provide sufficient tension to cause the bottom of the zipper to separate.
Perhaps any physicists on the board can analyze the problem and the proposed solution and enlighten us.
I have a pair of hiking shorts that have an upside-down zipper. They have an elastic waist and no top button, so the zipper can’t help you put them on. But the waist is so stretchy that it’s not a problem.
The idea is that if you’re wearing a large backpack, the waist belt covers the top of your pants. With a normal zipper you’d have to undo your waist belt to take a leak. With the upside-down zipper, you can open your fly, do your bid’ness and zip up (actually, down) without disturbing your pack. Great for the backpacker in a hurry.
OK, so suppose we have a coat-type zipper zipping down… While it’s true that this would require the extra operation of lining up the zipper, it would eliminate the need for a top button, so the net effort would be about the same. If you like the look of the top button, just sew a dummy button onto the top flap.
Quoth Gary T:
There’s a third possibility: I’ve seen many pairs of pants where the zipper never had a lock to begin with (especially with the plastic zippers). And if there’s not much friction in the zipper (also common of the plastic ones), gravity is quite sufficient to drop the zipper, without aid of tension. Yes, I have tested this.
And yabob, if you’re referring to the same “finer-toothed nylon zippers” that I’m thinking of (the ones made with a helix on each side, right?), they’re incredibly prone to just pulling apart in the middle, without intervention from the pull-tab.
