4 minute read
The Life of a Button
Earlier this year The Nest participated in another real-world learning unit at QUT, a Design Project Unit where students address a design industry challenge. Our brief? Create a compelling written and/or visual communication project that promotes The Nest’s core values of community, sustainability and conservation, particularly to younger audiences.
A passionate and talented group of Fashion Design and Communications students blew us away with heartfelt, engaging ideas which we look forward to sharing more of in editions to come.
We hope you enjoy this first story by Paris Dove as much as we did.
ABOUT PARIS DOVE
I’m a third-year Communications student majoring in Digital Media, graduating this November I loved bringing The Nest to life through storytelling, and I hope to build a career in the fashion industry with brands that share strong, value-driven foundations like The Nest My goal is to apply storytelling through a marketing lens to help fashion brands connect with their audiences in meaningful and creative ways. I hope you enjoy my story "The Life of a Button".
I was the top button Not just any button, a fine vintage lady Antique brass, framing a deep amber centre Warm as honey. Born sometime in the 1950s, though, truth be told, I don’t remember it. Buttons don’t remember their birth. We just come into the world stitched into purpose. I belonged on a coat dress, forest green, cinched with a belt that snapped at the waist just so.
Classic. Elegant. I had the best seat in the house, right at Mabel’s collarbone I saw everything. Every smile, every Sunday at the markets, every whiff of fresh flowers and crusty bread. I wasn’t some plastic knock-off, I was glass. But then the thing that all buttons fear the most started to happen to me. My thread it started to loosen.
“I’m fine!” I chirped, perking up whenever Mabel glanced my way. I tried to lean back a little, just casually adjusting, pretending everything was normal. But deep down? I knew. The slow unravelling had begun. The laundry spins, the Sunday outings, it had worn me down. Each dryer cycle was like a rollercoaster ride I hadn’t signed up for. One day, Mabel noticed. She sighed, lovingly unpicked me, and said, “I’ll save you for later.” I clinked into a jar with a dozen others, metal toggles, coat snaps, an old brooch. Time passed. A lot of time. Eventually, the conversations turned dark. What happens to us now?
The brooch would lower his voice and rasp, “I had a mate once... fine brass chap. Thought he was headed for a museum. Ended up buried under a pile of broken toys in a landfill, never to shine again.” We gasped. “And thrift shops!” hissed a coat snap. “Not the nice ones, ” added a belt buckle. “The scary kind. Fluorescent lights buzzing, sticky floors, racks so overloaded you can barely breathe”. “Thrown into a fifty-cent bin!” a toggle cried. “Manhandled! Tossed about! Hot-glued to a Halloween costume only to be worn once ”. “Only worn once ” I whispered. The words sent a chill through my glass. Mabel’s house grew quiet. No more market days. No more Mabel.
Then, one afternoon, someone came. They opened the jar, stared at us, then scribbled: “The Nest.Donate” on a box with a squeaky Sharpie. We were tumbled in with fabric remnants and hauled off. We arrived at a place called The Nest Haberdashery. The Nest hummed with laughter, music, the clatter of scissors and mugs of cinnamon tea. Sunlight spilled across old buttons and odd bits, and people spoke to fabric like it might speak back. Here, forgotten things weren’t thrown out. They were treasured. A kind-eyed lady found me. Wiped me clean. Made me shine. She pressed me onto a recycled card and wrote, “Vintage Collection”. I stood proud again.
Then she walked in, a girl with paint under nails and a needle in her hand She wore an oversized denim jacket that she had thrifted. She held me up and whispered, “Perfect”. I dance again - not at garden parties or Sunday services, but at roof top bars with booming speakers. We sing too loud at concerts, scream lyrics into the night sky. We hug her friends tight and stain the jacket with lipstick. I hold her jacket closed against the cool night air as she stumbles home, still laughing. I have been given a new life Loved not once But twice.
