Buttons

[Doggy Daddy]

Those little alligator clamp thingies seem to be made to wear holes in good pants.

Nice try, missed again.  Note the attachments that attach to the belt.  Note how the one going to the rear (hah!) is made to straddle the belt loop above the crack.  Works quite well.  No gators.  Though I do have a couple of pairs that use the gator clamps.  The clamps seem to be of a better quality than the ones I remember being on suspenders decades ago.

[Tallpine]

I used to wear the suspenders with clamps, and never found that they caused any unacceptable damage to my pants (usually carhart trousers).  They wore out pretty fast anyway what with bashing through the brush all the time that the little bit of wear from the clamps was insignificant.

When they started making us wear Kevlar chaps, I got some of the internal pads from Baileys.  Originally with a pair of jeans made for the purpose, but then we figured out how to buy snaps and just mount them in regular jeans.  Then even later finally just slid the liners down in the jeans and clamped the tops to the waist line with the suspenders 

When logging I bought my jeans two or three inches too big in the waist to allow for plenty of freedom of movement when stepping over stuff in the woods (loggers develop huge thigh muscles from wading through slash).  So the suspenders were absolutely necessary and I never wore a belt, except for the wedge pouch belt around my hips.