Pushing Buttons – November 2026

Whenever I travel, I set aside a day for fabric shopping. While online shopping for fabric has leapt enormously in the last few years, nothing beats being able to touch and see everything up close. Now that I’ve opened Curated Buttons (and can’t possibly justify more fabric,) that day has turned into a hunt for unique inventory.

In Buenos Aires last week, I started at the San Telmo market, reputed to be a source for antique buttons. The vendor that I found was exactly the kind of eclectic woman you might imagine, but nothing in her stash was quite right. 

A few days later I met Eduardo. I had looked on Instagram for button makers and saw his story. Eduardo Alonso runs El Rey de los Botones – the King of Buttons. His father opened the shop in 1933. Eduardo is 87, and he has been making buttons since he was 14.

He’s only open from 11–1 and 4–6. At 11:05, after lurking outside awkwardly for a few minutes, I tapped on the door and he let me in. Turns out, like most of Buenos Aires, Eduardo doesn't speak English and I speak virtually no Spanish. But it became clear right away that he was game to muddle through with hand signals, Google Translate, and random customers who jumped in to help.

How to choose when I wanted to buy his entire inventory? The walls are stacked with old cardboard boxes, each a little shallower than a shoe box. Sewn to the outside of each, four or five buttons, coated with 30, 40, 50 years of dust.

While he helped the steady stream of customers looking for one button here, or there, I took photos of the boxes I wanted to look inside of. When he had a chance, he'd pull down a box for me. Inside, buttons as gorgeous as the day they were made.

I could have talked to Eduardo all day. I had so many questions. But news articles filled in some blanks. Eduardo and his twin started out cutting buttons with a saw and polishing them by hand on a stone. At one time the family ran three shops. His brother died young, and Eduardo has carried on alone. He still turns buttons on an old Italian lathe in the back.

I picked out whatever I loved, with a focus on buttons I had never seen before and imagined I would never again. Big statement buttons that you plan the project around. While I couldn’t do a full interview with him, I did manage to ask what my choices were made of. Turns out most of them were casein. ‘Galalita’, the Spanish word for it, didn't translate, but we got there through "milk," one of the few words I do know in Spanish. Casein is made from milk protein, and was a favourite button material for much of the last century but is now rare.

As I was leaving, I told him (well, typed) how special he and his shop were. He asked my name – it took me a minute to understand – so I wrote it down on the paper bag that was serving as my invoice. He gestured for me to sit and wait. I couldn't see what he was doing, but I could hear the whirr of a machine at the back. He returned with a button with my name etched into it in his shaky handwriting: Chery, without the L.

The missing letter reminded me of my late mum, who called me Sherry. I haven’t heard her voice in close to 20 years now, but it took me right back.

See everything I bought from Eduardo in the Argentina Treasures collection.