What Your Buttons Say About You
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What you fasten—and don't—communicates a lot more than you might think.
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When I was at college, I shared a flat with a friend who suffered from koumpounophobia, otherwise known as a fear of, or aversion to, buttons. It’s a condition that affects 0.001 percent of the world’s population. It’s pretty niche, but that’s still 75,000 people. The late Steve Jobs reportedly was one of them. His solution was wearing turtlenecks instead of buttoned shirts. But we may also have to thank him for replacing the buttons on our phones with touch screens for the same reason.
If you suspect you may suffer from koumpounophobia, look away now. This week’s newsletter is exclusively about the wonder of buttons and the secret language of fastening them (or not). Buttons have played a vital bit-part in style for centuries. The zipper didn’t kill them; neither did Velcro. And we’ve been fiddling with them one way or another throughout as a means of self-expression.
Italian businessman and style icon Gianni Agnelli wore his Brooks Brothers button-down shirts* with the collar tips unfastened. A weird affectation, you might think. Not at all. It telegraphed to colleagues and competitors—at a time when you could only buy Brooks Brothers shirts in New York—that you were a fully paid-up member of the jet set. It’s all semiotics, really.
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Look closely and you can see Gianni Agnelli’s unbuttoned collar tips. (Photo: Massimo Di Vita/Archivio Massimo Di Vita/Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images)
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Another great button-futzer was the Duke of Kent (1902-42), younger brother of brother of both the Duke of Windsor and King George VI. While the Duke of Windsor played inventively with all manners of modern style, the Duke of Kent** was more of a classicist. But he did take to buttoning his double-breasted suits on the bottom right button instead of the technically correct one above it. It wasn’t an accident. Buttoning his jackets this way meant the lapels were noticeably wider and gave a slouchy and more comfortable look to his bespoke suits.
A direct echo of that 1930s Kent look emerged in Milan in the 1980s when the power look dominated the runway; big-shouldered, drapey suits from Italian designers like Giorgio Armani, Gianni Versace, and Gianfranco Ferré spoke of the fusion of modern style and money. These often looked remarkably similar to that low-slung buttoning pioneered by the Duke.
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The Duke of Kent’s low-slung buttoning, circa 1931. (Photo: Keystone/Getty Images)
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Unbuttoning buttons that look like they should be buttoned up is a surprisingly common pursuit in the game of male style. And there are a lot of logical reasons for leaving some fastened and others undone. Much of it comes from tailors, whose prime reason for existence is to make their customers both look and feel good. The secret is knowing where your waist is.
Take the single-breasted suit jacket or blazer, by far the most common tailored piece in most men’s wardrobes. You might have three buttons, two, or even just one with which to fasten your jacket. Here comes the rule: You only button one button.
On a one-button suit, yes, you’ve guessed it: Button that one. On a two-button suit, button the top one only. And on a three-button suit, button only the middle one. Why? Because the fulcrum of a suit jacket, the point of balance which any tailor worth his salt will strive to nail in every jacket he ever makes, sits directly over your navel, your anatomical waistline. It’s the only button you actually need because, in classical men’s tailoring at least, it’s at the narrowest part of your suit and, hopefully, the narrowest part of you, too. So that button serves to emphasise your waist, creating a V-shape to the torso above and a flare to the skirt (the bit around your hips) below. Fasten that one button only and the world will admire you and your tailor will thank you.
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When JFK is the only one who got it wrong… (Photo: PhotoQuest/Getty Images)
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Move over to the cuff, and it’s not about which button you fasten, but which one you leave undone. In the 2000s and 2010s, as fancy tailoring hit a fever pitch in menswear, undoing a single cuff button became popular amongst a niche set of men. To save on cost and allow for alterations, ready-to-wear brands rarely make their cuff buttons functional. Having functional buttons said (to those who cared) that you were of that lofty fraternity who spent a disproportionate amount of money on bespoke suits. Of course, fashion quickly caught on and began to add just one functioning cuff button, so you could join the conversation even if your suit was ready-to-wear. Which is precisely what killed that trend stone dead for everyone else.
Cuff buttons are a handy segue into a spot of history. Most of the details of a modern suit jacket derive from two centuries ago and more. Those functioning cuff buttons originally allowed gentlemen to slide their sleeves up their arms when in the saddle as protection against that scourge of the 18th century, horse spittle. At least that’s one problem that does not vex us anymore.
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Most double-breasted jackets have an interior jigger button. It’s rarely used. (Photo: Husbands Paris)
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Similarly, it’s been decades since men got out of the habit of sticking a carnation in a lapel buttonhole, but it’s still there just in case. The irony of all this is that’s not why it was there in the first place. Modern tailoring—by which I mean a suit or a blazer—derives from riding coats, tailcoats, and frock coats, many of them originally cut double-breasted. And because they were designed to be worn buttoned up to the neck in the saddle, the buttonhole corresponded with a button on the other breast so you could close a coat up fully. The only reason jackets have lapels is because they were originally designed to be closed up rather than turned back.
But the prize for the most unfastened button in the modern wardrobe must go to the jigger. The what? The jigger is that solitary inside button on a double-breasted suit that one always forgets to fasten. It has an important job. It keeps the overlapping fronts of a double-breasted suit aligned. Opinions vary as to the origin of the name, but to me the most likely is that it came from a small triangular sail, also called a jigger, that would be hoisted on the aft mast of a multi-masted sailing ship. The jigger, in nautical terms, provides a certain lateral stability, but mainly it helps balance the sails to ensure a smooth and efficient passage through the water. Keeping things on an even keel is precisely what your jigger button is for, too.
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Troubleshooting Buttons
Buttons pop off, it’s what they do. Here’s how to remedy it.
Learning to sew your buttons is the first rite of passage of a grown-ass man. It will save you time and money, as well as a trip to the menders. If sailors can hand sew a beefy ship’s sail, you can sew a button.
When you buy a suit you should find a little bag in the inside pocket with spare buttons of various sizes. Put them away somewhere safe. The bag will usually have the brand name on it so you can locate it quickly when you lose a button. Spare buttons are also sometimes sewn inside your shirt, though in these cost- and corner-cutting days, it’s no longer universal.
Hotel sewing kits are generally not worth bothering with unless you have no other choice. The thread can barely hold its own weight, and the needles are so pathetic they usually break before you can get the job done. For a home kit, invest in good strong thread like Gütermann or Coats & Clark—and definitely not the cheapo kits you can find on Amazon. You’ll probably only need navy, black, khaki, and white (generally about $3 each).
Don’t skimp on needles, either. John James is my go-to. Founded in 1840 producing sailmaker’s needles, it’s based in Redditch, UK, the epicenter of world needle-making. I bet you didn’t know there’s an epicenter of needle-making, did you? Well, there is, and John James makes every kind of needle there. Oh, and you need a good pair of Japanese snips, tiny scissors that will finish off the job perfectly. Hand forged Terazaki Hamono Tsume scissors look as cool as sushi knives and can cost up to $150. But you can get perfectly adequate ones for a few dollars from a range of brands on Amazon.
The default setting for sewing buttons is an “X” shape. But serious shirtmakers often sew their buttons instead with the threads in an “arrow” or “crow’s-foot” formation. There are two reasons for that. One, it anchors the button more strongly to the cloth, with the concentration of thread offering a stronger, longer-lasting fix. Two, an arrow stitch also tells you your shirtmaker went the extra mile and did it by hand.
* A “button-down shirt” is one that has buttons to fasten down the collar tips. A shirt that has buttons down the front is called “a shirt.”
** Style with buttons ran in the family. The Duke of Kent’s grandfather, King Edward VIII, personally launched the still-surviving rule that you always (I mean always) leave the bottom button of your waistcoat (otherwise known as a vest in the States) undone. But that wasn’t style; it was because he was terribly fat.
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Thanks for reading this week’s Big Black Book newsletter. See you in a couple weeks. Until then, feel free to drop me a note at nicksullivanesquire@hearst.com.
- Nick Sullivan, creative director
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