An aglet is the small sheath at the end of a lace or cord — a device so ubiquitous and so modest that it is almost invisible, yet without it, the entire system of laced closure would unravel within moments.
The word enters English from the French aiguillette, meaning a small needle, and the aglet has existed in some form since the ancient world. The earliest aglets were made of metal — brass, copper, silver — and were crafted by wire-drawers who specialized in the tiny tubes. Metal aglets were durable, but they had the disadvantage of fraying the eyelets through which they were repeatedly pulled. Glass and stone aglets appeared in the eighteenth century, and the nineteenth century saw the introduction of aglets made from rolled paper or fabric — cheaper, but less durable.
The modern aglet is typically made of plastic — a product of the twentieth-century petrochemical industry that made the production of aglets cheap enough to be disposable. The plastic aglet is applied by a machine that crimps the molten material around the end of the lace, creating a seal that prevents fraying and guides the lace through the eyelet. The process is so efficient that a single machine can produce thousands of aglets per hour, and the cost per aglet is measured in fractions of a cent.
The aglet is a study in the economics of attention. It is one of the most manufactured objects in the world — every shoe, every hoodie, every pair of sweatpants depends on it — yet it is almost never considered as a designed object. Designers who obsess over the curve of a heel or the weight of a zipper rarely consider the aglet, despite the fact that it determines the daily experience of putting on and taking off the garment. The aglet is a reminder that fashion’s most essential acts — fastening, closing, adjusting — are enabled by components so small they escape notice, and that the boundaries of fashion extend far beyond the visible surface of the garment.
