Have you ever paid attention to the zipper on your clothes? If so, you must have noticed the three letters that usually appear on the zip.
Whether on jeans, pants, vests, coats or even backpacks, a small detail has certainly escaped some of you: almost all the zippers have the same inscription engraved on the zipper. Three little letters which are not there by chance…
What does this inscription mean?
You just need to look a little carefully at the details of the zip to distinguish the three characters: YKK. It is in fact simply the name of a registered trademark! More precisely, these letters designate the abbreviation of Yoshida Kogyo Kabushikikaisha, a Japanese company created in 1934 by an industrialist named Tadao Yoshida. This businessman, born at the beginning of the 20thth century, is one of the first to have understood the practicality of the zip, this super practical technical process invented by the American Whitcomb Judson in 1893.
The genius of Tadao Yoshida, who is therefore not at the origin of the innovation, is to have launched a company which manages the entire chain of production from A to Z and designs, each year, nearly 3,000,000 kilometers of zips. So, YKK melts its own brass which is used to make the teeth, makes its own polyester, its own fabric, its own dyes, its own seams and even its own boxes to ship orders. Italian designer Elsa Schiaparelli made no mistake. From 1935, she added zippers to her dresses, which allowed women to dress and undress without anyone’s help. Nearly 100 years later, zippers are still a feature on luxury clothing. Nicolas Ghesquière, the artistic director of Louis Vuitton, has even made it one of his stylistic signatures, present in an XXL version on his dresses, jackets and coats.