Belt (clothing)

Belts, similar in concept to suspenders (braces), are articles of clothing worn to both support a pair of pants (trousers) around the waist and complete a professional or otherwise fashionable appearance.

Materials

Modern belts can be made from leather, nylon, cotton, chain, or other decorative material. Most belts are made from a material that is durable, because of the excessive wear that a belt must tolerate over the course of its use, and are made from leather for this reason.

Functions

Although many belts are made for appearance, some are produced to fill a specific functional need. Tool belts, for example, are made of leather or nylon and have flaps, straps, and pockets for one to place various hand-held tools in order to maintain their accessability. Gun belts often have a holster attached which would carry a serviceman's revolver or pistol. Famously, the fictional character Batman usually has a customized utility belt that carries a plethora of various gadgets and contraptions.

Parts of a belt

A belt is usually assembled from a length of material referred to as a "strap", a buckle which has a pin that is inserted into one of the punched holes, and a beltloop which the excess strap is fed through. The most customizable piece of a belt is the belt buckle.

Belt buckles come in an incredible array of sizes, shapes, and designs. In some music scenes, it is not atypical to find large, elaborate, decorative belt buckles to be the norm. Technology has also allowed functionality to be built into belt buckles: portable led scrolling signs and their controlling circuity have been a recent fad targeted toward a specific group of people, often represented by the phrase "geeks".

Symbolism

A belt may often carry symbolic meaning - most commonly in some forms of martial arts, such as karate and judo, where students begin with a white belt and may, after years of training and gradings, advance through colour ranks to obtain a black belt. The difficulty of advancement varies both between and even within styles.