I’ve been busy with work deadlines, but I finally had a chance yesterday to pack up some old lengths of fabric that have been sitting in my closet and send them off to my tailor Steed. One is a dark brown Donegal with orange flecks; the other a large-scale glen plaid tweed that was designed by Michael over at The London Lounge, and modeled after something Gianni Agnelli was sometimes seen wearing.
One of the joys of bespoke is being able to pick your own details, and even for a conservative dresser such as myself, there are a ton of options. The cut of the lapels (bellied or straight), shape of the fronts (cutaway or closed), and stitching techniques (swelled or picked) can mean everything in a jacket.
For these two coats, I’m going off my usual order and getting a bit cheeky with the sleeve buttons. Roughly speaking, most English tailors, if left alone, would put four buttons on everything, while Neapolitans prefer four on business suits and three on anything casual. Sometimes those buttons touch (which would be called kissing); sometimes they overlap (which would be called waterfall).
During the heydays of Ivy Style, J. Press used to do the same three-button sleeve, while Brooks Brothers used two. The style works best, I think, when the buttons are nicely spaced apart, like how Brooks Brothers used to make them, so nobody assumes your tailor forgot to add the other buttons. The downside: unlike the three-button sleeve, a spaced-out two-button can’t be transformed into a conventional four if you later change your mind.
The one-button sleeve is rarer, although more common in Southern Italy than anywhere else. A more casual detail, it’s typically kept to sport coats and casual suits, such as those made from seersucker or tweed. I also think the style is best when the button is slightly bigger, so that (again) nobody mistakes this for being accidental. Something between the size of your regular sleeve buttons and the buttons at the front of your coat is perfect.
And what about five? Only if you’re Prince Charles, who sometimes wears a five-button sleeve in the tradition of Welsh Guards. As Voxsartoria explains: “Grenadier is a one button cuff, Coldstream two, Scots three, Irish four, and Welsh five – going from one to five in seniority.”
For me, I’m getting two-button sleeves on the W. Bill Donegal and one-button sleeves on the Agnelli-inspired glen plaid. Playing with the number of cuff buttons can seem like a small detail, but that’s also what makes it fun.
(Photos via Ivy Style, Yuko, Fujita, Voxsartoria, Suits of James Bond, Huntsman, and Henry Poole)
