Dating Outerwear by zipper design

[Dinerman]

Hardware like zippers can be incredibly useful when it comes to dating vintage clothes, especially when other means of identification (union tags, makers tags) are not present. During the "golden era", Talon was America's largest zipper company. Their constant refinement of their design allows for garments with specific variants to be placed within a chronology.

A variety of components comprise a single zipper. Each component had a number of different versions, some of which may come down to the specific machine it was stamped with. That is to say, a particular component may have a slightly different design or font from another, even if they were made on the same day. With something so small, it's easy to get bogged down in minutia, difficult to compile all the variants, and even harder to be completely precise. Design changes were not made all at once- components were used up until they were gone. As such, you will run across "transitional" versions of all these zipper designs - older components mixed with newer ones. When using hardware as a dating method, you should consider the possibility of replacement. As with any other dating "clue", zipper design should not be the end of assigning a date to a garment. For any kind of accuracy, it should be combined with a variety of other methods.

To illustrate the kind of minutia I'm talking about, here are a variety of designs of the component which attaches the puller to the slider. As a general rule, this part was marked "Talon" in the mid 1930s through to the mid 1940s, after which point it was simplified to a blank design. Even with this as a guideline, consider the wide (and and almost definitely incomplete) variety of stampings below.

Terry posted the image of these zipper pulls and sliders in another thread in Outerwear, and I thought it would be useful to include them here. Some are in Dinerman's guide, but others are not. According to Terry, they all date to the 1930s.

 

[GoodTimesGone]

Thanks for your time spent researching and posting this information. I pulled out a few vintage jackets I own that have Talon zips today and got a better idea of what time period they were from. I bought a private purchase A-2 style jacket a few years ago from a SAC veteran who retired near Offutt Air Force Base. With your guide I've pinpointed its age to the mid '40s, which is a logical era for it to be purchased by an aircrew member.
(THIS THREAD SHOULD BE A STICKY.)
___________________________________________________________
Tom

 

[Plumbline]

AWESOME research ... and a GREAT tool .... thanks Dinerman, as always thorough, detailed and more importantly useful

 

[Sloan1874]

+1 and this should really be a sticky.

 

[Dinerman]

Even better than a sticky- it's in the guides section.

 

[seabass]

Good Info D-Man
a quick & handy guide for me !

 

[Tomasso]

Kudos for the excellent effort, DMan!

And I'll repeat this very important proviso just in case it gets overlooked in this wonderful treatise.

When using hardware as a dating method, you should consider the possibility of replacement. As with any other dating "clue", zipper design should not be the end of assigning a date to a garment. For any kind of accuracy, it should be combined with a variety of other methods.

 

[Baron Kurtz]

Yes, while we can date the zipper's manufacture reasonably (see above, well done DMan), the manufacture of the garment it's in is quite another matter.

While it probably holds that garments would be manufactured relatively close to the date of zipper manufacture, the use of trimmings in clothing manufacture, like the use of labels, is notoriously slack. A zipper might sit around for a long time (80 years even - see Japanese reproductions with original stock zippers). Added to the possib(probab)ility of replacement, zippers sometimes can be confusion to true dating.

 

[Peacoat]

Another good job, D-man. Or, rather, I should say, a good start. Now what about the other manufacturers? Crown, for one, is begging for attention.

There is a book, long since out of print, that dates all of the zippers in use up through, perhaps, the 1960s. I had one spotted online in an antique bookstore in Manhattan several years ago. By the time I got in touch with the owner, he had sold it. Oh well, maybe in another lifetime. PC

 

[Dinerman]

There are so many other companies to get into, and I'm working on tracking the info down. One of the issues I'm running into is photographs. I have a lot of Talon photos from various jackets I've owned. I don't have enough variations of design from other makers to put together a dating guide that I would feel is adequately thorough. If anyone feels like sending me photos to use, or feels like adding to the research, I'd be grateful.

A quick note about Crown: The switch was made from the "chevron" teeth found on the zipper at left to the "two way" symmetrical teeth on the zipper at right in about 1943 on wartime applications. The design was released to civilian applications after WWII. So if you have a jacket with the two-way tooth design, it's mid '40s or newer.

 

[Baron Kurtz]

With Crown, you'll want to any links with Coats [&] Clark. By the 50s they were using what I recall to be essentially identical pulls.

 

[Dinerman]

Like so:

 

[Baron Kurtz]

Yep, just what I was recalling. Do you know of any links between the companies? Even the teeth on the CC are "Crown teeth".

 

[Dinerman]

Crown was a division of the Clarks O.N.T / J&P Coats "family". Originally an independent company, Clarks Coats bought them out in around 1936. Originally located in Warren, PA, they moved production to Oriskany Falls, NY in 1946.
So both of those C&C and Crozn zips were produced on the same machines in the same plant. What I don't know is why Coats/Clark were producing nearly identical zips under their own name as well as their Crown zipper subsidiary.

 

[Baron Kurtz]

The grand il(de)lusion of choice for the consumer …

 

[Dinerman]

And to confuse the issue, you get things like this, from 1955.

 

[Dinerman]

"Style 102" Talon. Grommet attachment, rays on slider, more oval slider-puller attachment than later '30s zips (see above). Small hole puller. Plain slider back.

 

[Draznek]

Very interesting thread , I have a talon which dosnt seem to be pictured , I think its mid 50s http://flic.kr/p/bzALku
The jacket its on http://flic.kr/p/bzALaQ

 

[Dinerman]

Talon pocket zipper styles. Can anyone pin down some more definite dates on these? The dates I have are of the jackets they're off of, with the dating based on other factors.

Top row, with Talon branded slider. 1930s Ball pull, 1930s ring pull, 1940s/1950s diamond pull
Bottom row, with round instead of rectangular attachment to slider. 1950s Ring pull, 1960s/1970s modified ring pull, 1960s/1970s teardrop pull

 

[53Effie]

Does anyone have knowledge of the Serval zipper company. I would be particularly interested in knowing when the company closed. Can their zippers be dated by style? I have an older perfecto style jacket with this brand of zipper and would like to be able to date it approximately at least. No brand name in the jacket. I have not been able to find too much detail about this company on the web.