As a young adult, I came across people with phobias – actual phobias, the debilitating, uncontrollable fear type. To try to better understand their situation, over the following years I did some occasional reading on the subject. This is when I first encountered the term koumpounophobia, the fear of buttons (from the modern Greek koumpi, to button up). I had already started my professional button life in Amsterdam, and over the next three years I wondered about this phobia.
One in 75,000 people are said to have this condition. I didn’t meet any of them in the Netherlands, or at least
