Elsewhere in Europe, pins had long since given way to the broach (brooch) as a fastener to hold clothing together. The brooch, used first much like the modern safety pin, had been turned into a fashion statement, and artisans created them with an ever-increasing attention to intricate designs. However, they proved too heavy to be reliable, because of their metal base and the variety of objects added to their surfaces for style, and they proved basically unreliable as fasteners, frequently breaking and coming undone. Dissatisfied with the bulky, and to them gaudy, brooches, Athenian women, denied their cherished pins, began improving the brooch, designing ever smaller and more delicate fasteners. By the time Rome absorbed Athens into its expanding empire, the exquisite Athenian brooches were coveted by the European upper classes.

Brooches remained the primary clothing fasteners well into the 13th century. Commoners in England, with its windswept, cold, and inhospitable climate, rejected the clothing of their own upper classes, and even more so, the light, drafty garments of the Greeks and Romans. Accustomed to hard work and a physical lifestyle, commoners demanded heavy, tight-fitting clothes to ward off England's notoriously foul weather. Pins were useless to them, and brooches came unhinged and punctured their bodies with the rusty metal used for clasps. Placing function ahead of style, the English commoner developed eyelets, which they sewed into their pants and shirts. Into these eyelets, they laced their garments tightly together with string or thin cord.

The British eyelets gradually spread to every country in Europe, and then to most of the civilized world. During this period an enterprising goldsmith in 17th century Germany hit upon the idea of filling the British eyelet with something other than string or cord. He invented the button. He catered exclusively to the upper classes and cranked out lavishly covered buttons made with precious metals and inlaid with expensive gems. The more practical commoners took to the convenience of buttons but expected them to do nothing more than hold their clothing together. Using the materials at hand, they covered their buttons surfaces mostly with fabric, or they made them entirely out of natural elements, including shells, polished rocks, and fine-grained woods.

Many of the British, contending daily with the fierce island weather, still preferred clothing with eyelets and string. British seamen, however, faced severe handicaps when all cinched up with string, especially at sea, and even more so in the cold, drenching storms they encountered regularly. During these times, with their clothing water-soaked and weighted down, cold winds numbed their bodies and made it impossible keep warm. And in their frozen, feelingless fingers, buttons proved worthless.

Sometime in the 17th century, an unknown seaman hit up a grand idea. He replaced the string, which expanded and contracted in the changing weather, with a simple, dependable hook, thus inventing the hook-and-eye fastener.

In effect, he fashioned a strong metal prong for the hook and reinforced the eyelets. Then he took the idea a step further, and produced the world's first belt buckle. Sailors attached these clever devices to leather strips and used them to hold up water-soaked trousers made heavy by the torrential rains of the north seas. With amazing quickness, the belt replaced the strings and cords sailors had used around their waists. Belt buckles gave them the ability to fasten and unfasten their garments in any weather, even when the cold stole away all or most of the feeling from their fingers.

A few decades later, American Puritans favored inexpensive belt buckles so completely and, for their clothing, the simple hook and eye fasteners so universally, as to totally reject the use of buttons. In short order, buttons became a vanity that Puritans discouraged, and then condemned as sinful.

In 1849, American Walter Hunt invented what he called the miracle fastener. We now know it as the safety pin. This was followed by another American invention in the 1850's, also called the miracle fastener. We now call it the snap fastener or snap. Following the invention of the snap many styles were designed using many types of metal. Quickly incorporated into the snaps were decorative tops. These tops, similar to the buttons of the time, were decorated with emblems, coats of arms, or other desireable material was fastened to the top such as precious metal, glass, bone, ceramic, or shell. The pearl snap, itself, was invented to imitate buttons made of Abalone shell and/or pearls. It's sheen and beauty was eyecatching and it quickly became a popular choice in the early 1900's. As for it's application to western wear, well, that is another subject.

According to Rockmount Ranchwear of Denver, Colorado the pearl snap was first introduced into western wear in 1946 by their company. It is said that Jack A. Weil wanted to use snaps on his new shirts to help the shirts rip away from themselves if snagged by a branch when a cowboy was on the trail. The feature of ripping away, unlike the button which would just rip, would greatly reduce injury and increase clothing durability in the cowboy world. He marketed these new inventions by supplying the new shirts to rodeos and parades in the Cheyenne, Wyoming Frontier Day’s. He convinced the Cheyenne Chamber of Commerce that all involved should wear these and they enforced a rule that anyone out of dress could be fined. His new idea quickly caught on as a smart safety function for western work shirts and it quickly became the new style for ranchers and rapidly gained popularity with all of western culture as well. There are claims that H Bar C was the originator of the pearl snap on western wear; however, this statement was easily dispelled by Jack A. Weil’s grandson Steve Weil who states that they were making the western shirts for H Bar C in the 40’s. Thereby, Rockmount Ranchwear is the self-proclaimed father of pearl snaps on western wear.

Over the next five decades as fabrics, yokes, and cuts have changed the pearl snaps on those shirts have remained and though the origin of the pearl snap’s application to western wear is bit debatable the pearl snap itself has become the defining attribute of western wear as we know it today. Hence, (like the song says) PEARL SNAPS, along with cheap bourbon whiskey, will remain the same! So--