Why We Don't Button the Bottom Button

There is a button on your jacket that you are not supposed to use. It is sewn on properly, it has a buttonhole, and it would fasten perfectly well. It is there, in short, to be ignored.

To a visitor from another planet this would seem absurd. To a gentleman it is second nature. The difference between the two is about a hundred and twenty years of habit and one rather well-fed king.

The custom is usually credited to Edward VII, who spent the better part of six decades as Prince of Wales before he finally became king in 1901. He was a man of enormous appetite for food, for society and for clothes, and in time his waistline came to reflect the first of these more than the others.

The story goes that he began leaving the lowest button of his waistcoat undone, whether for comfort or by oversight. Nobody was going to tell the heir to the throne that he had misbuttoned. The sensible thing, if you wished to remain on his guest list, was to do the same. So the court did the same, then society did the same, and then everyone who wished to resemble society did the same.

Historians will tell you the details are uncertain, as they are with most good stories about royalty. The result is not uncertain at all. An entire civilisation adjusted its buttons to spare one man's dignity. That is either the finest or the silliest thing etiquette has ever done, and I am inclined to think it was both.

The rule began on the waistcoat and migrated outward. As the lounge jacket replaced the frock coat as the everyday garment of the gentleman, the habit came with it.

What matters is that tailors noticed. Once men stopped fastening the bottom button, jackets were no longer cut to be fastened there. Over time the fronts were curved away below the waist so the jacket would open cleanly over the hips. The bottom button stopped being a fastening and became a full stop.

This is the part that most men miss. The rule is no longer a matter of courtesy to a dead king. It is a matter of engineering. Your jacket has been designed, in its proportions and in its cut, on the assumption that you will leave that button alone.

Fasten the bottom button on a modern two-button jacket and watch what happens. The front pulls tight across the hips. Creases fan out from the button like the spokes of a wheel. The skirt of the jacket, which was meant to fall open and move as you walk, is suddenly clamped shut. You look less like a man in a suit and more like a parcel awaiting collection.

It also makes sitting, standing and walking marginally harder, which is the opposite of what tailoring is for. A jacket should allow a man to move as though he were wearing nothing much at all. Buttoned at the bottom, it moves as though it has opinions about your posture.

There is a practical lesson here that applies far beyond buttons. When a thing looks wrong, it is usually because someone is using it against its design.

For those who prefer instructions to history, here they are.

One button. Fasten it. It is the only one you have, and it is not the bottom button so much as the only button. Dinner jackets are often cut this way.

Two buttons. Fasten the top. Never the bottom. This is the jacket most men own, and the one most men get wrong.

Three buttons. Fasten the middle. The top is optional, the bottom is not. On a three-roll-two, where the lapel rolls softly past the top button, that top button is decorative and should be left to its decoration.

Waistcoats. Leave the lowest button undone, as the King intended. Some waistcoats are cut straight across the bottom to be fastened fully; your tailor will tell you, and you should believe him.

Double-breasted. A different animal with its own logic. Keep it fastened when standing, use the button or buttons it was cut for, and do not wander around with it hanging open like a dressing gown.

Overcoats. Built for weather rather than manners. Fasten them as the cold demands.

And, regardless of jacket: unfasten when you sit, fasten again when you rise. This should happen without thought, the way a man takes off his hat indoors.

It is tempting to dismiss all this as fuss. A button is a button. Who is checking?

Everyone, as it happens, though few of them could tell you what they are checking for. Most people cannot name the rule, but nearly everyone can tell when a jacket looks right and when it looks strained. The undone bottom button is one of those quiet signals that a man knows how his clothes are meant to work.

Small rules survive precisely because they are small. They cost nothing to follow, they take no money and they cannot be bought. They are learned, and the learning shows.

A king left a button undone, and a century later you are still taking his advice. There are worse men to imitate in matters of tailoring. In matters of the dinner table, I would advise more caution.

The bottom-button rule is a good illustration of how etiquette and design reinforce each other. A social habit, usually credited to Edward VII, became a tailoring convention, and jackets have since been cut on the assumption that the bottom button stays open. Following it is not mere deference to tradition; it is wearing the garment as it was built. For anyone selling tailoring, it is also a reminder that customers judge fit as much by how a jacket is worn as by how it is made.

Until next week,

B.

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Forward this to a man who fastens every button he can find and wonders why he looks gift-wrapped.