2010/05/18    [ 159 ]

Lapel pin history and significance

Lapel Pins Histroy Dates Back To World War I.

Indeed we can pick up the time line of the pins in both the First and Second World Wars where their use shifted from recognition in the sense of identity to recognition in the sense of taking note of distinguishing service of troops. To this day lapel pins still fulfil this role but what has really made them somewhat of an American symbol is their crossing over into the civilian world.

A quite obvious source of this cross over are police and fire departments who took the use of the military pin to identify other members of the division or brigade and to recognize good service and attached them to their professions. From there the move to college students and then high schools is relatively obvious and once the use of pins became popular more and more groups saw them as a way to share their message and also allow people to display publicly their belief in a cause or belonging to a group. In and of itself the emergence of the lapel pin is quite remarkable, and today it’s hard to imagine a line up of men in suits without a few of them sporting one, but what is more fascinating than simply the emergence of the lapel pin is the prominence and importance that has become attached to one particular pin– that of the stars and stripes.