Lapel pin

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A lapel pin (also called "button" or "badge") is a small pin often worn on the lapel of a dress jacket. Lapel pins can be purely ornamental or can indicate the wearer's affiliation with an organization or cause; for example, American Flag lapel pins became very popular in the United States, especially among politicians, following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

Lapel pins were especially popular accessories among college-age folks of the late 1960's in the USA. Usually they had writing, sometimes pictures. One particular line of pins bore slogans having to do with the Lord of the Rings trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien.

In the USSR and the People's Republic of China, the prominent lapel pins with portrait of Lenin and Mao Tse Tung, respectively, were worn by youth as well as by Communist party members or people who felt like showing their official political credo. In Czechoslovakia the Mao badges/pins were worn in the late sixties-early seventies by non-conformist youth as a prank and a way how to provoke the "normalisationist" reactionaries of the purged post-1968 Communist Party of Czechoslovakia.

In the 1970s, initiates of Guru Maharaj Ji extensively used lapel pins with an image of the guru's face on them.

As of late 2007, lapel pins are enjoying a return to popularity, this time as a part of what it known as the Fashion Blossomin of insider artists. These lapel pins have "primitive" art printed on them. These are used as part of the three-piece ensemble and the five-piece ensemble.

Formerly, such as in the 1960's, lapel pins were worn on the breast pocket or on the left breast, but nowadays they are attached to belt straps, watch bands, shoes, zippers, purse straps, and caps as well.

The back of a lapel pin is called a clutch or fastener.

Metals used in the manufacturing process include bronze, copper, and iron, bronze being the most common. Composite materials include plastic, rubber, pvc, and silicone.

See also Award pin