Obscura

    How refreshing it is to learn you know almost nothing!  I most recently had this sensation at a small restaurant where the wine list was devoid of my preferred Burgundies and bubblies.  What blinked back at me was, if not entirely foreign, unfamiliar enough that my finger reflexively ran itself beneath the names as I sounded them out.  Mos-chi-fil-ero, my lips forming the syllables while the patient waiter hovered with his pencil.  Ne-rell-o Mas-ca-les-e. Sure—a bottle of that one, please.  It was terrific: a Sicilian varietal high in acid, low in tannin, but with a layered wildness that might, in more familiar wines, have been considered a flaw.  This is precisely the problem with becoming too familiar with anything; at some stage the enjoyment is supplanted by a persistent desire to find fault.  The unfamiliar, however, can act as a tonic, rejiggering expectations.

    The bonus to lesser-known wines are the terrific names.  We have all likely heard of Gewürztraminer, which makes highly aromatic white wines in Alsace and Germany, but what about Grüner Veltliner, (Austrian) Chasselas (Swiss), Grk (Croatian), Xinomavro (Greek), or, my personal favorite, Zweigelt.  This Austrian grape is the product of hybridizing two other fairly obscure varietals (St. Laurant and Blaufränkisch) in 1922.  Zweigelt makes wines of extraordinary finesse, at once balanced and firm while still managing a wily character.  Smoked brisket on Royal Derby china, if you will.  Incidentally, the name, pronounced TSVY-gelt, is taken from the brainy fellow who created it, which wasn’t his choice.  Dr. Zweigelt wanted to name his new grape rotburger.  

    Strangely, a similarly jarring sensation emerges when confronted with an obscure clothing material.  Cloth enthusiasts know this well.  I have often been lulled into thinking I understand cloth, at least from a consumer’s perspective, simply because I recognize the great divide between smooth worsteds and fuzzy woolens and have a working knowledge of twill versus plain weave.  And then I behold some rare specimen—perhaps a sixteen ounce high-twist hopsack or ethereal jacketing that, impossibly, still has nap—which unhinges entirely whatever junior-league expertise I thought I had.  Tweed can be especially enlightening: I like fourteen ounce cheviot for general wear, but interest in heavier tweeds has recently exposed me to keeper’s tweed almost twice that weight.  And what about the luxury sector; cashmere is old-hat compared to vicuña, yak and cervelt (cloth woven from the downy undercoats of New Zealand Red Deer).

    Neither is the seemingly pedestrian button immune from delivering a humbling blow.  With the exception of a set of antiqued silver ones sewn on a blazer, my buttons are horn.  I always assumed these handsome articles were the last word in fastening elegance.  But all it takes is a curious perusal through a tailor’s back room, as I recently did with Chris Despos.  There I spied buttons of corozo nut, coconut shell, and mother-of-pearl—both natural and smoked—any of which would be ideal for a summer-weight navy jacket.  The most shocking of all, however, were leather buttons.  Despos’ were far from the chunky leather-wrapped domes intended to complement rustic outerwear of heavy tweed though.  Instead, these are slim four-hole buttons that, upon closer inspection, are clad in neatly pressed layers of leather.  The effect is simultaneously refined and untamed.

    But are rare cloths and difficult-to-pronounce varietals important beyond their novelty?  Does the  jacket with understated leather buttons and a glass of Zweigelt share more than a certain insider appeal?  I suggested earlier that the unusual and rare can have the tonic effect of resetting the senses, but I wonder if a deeper agency is at work.  For every appealing new wine, for every interesting fiber or button, a dozen others fall short of expectations, and even those that do appeal can have limited shelf-life.  In this sense, indulging the obscure is sometimes refreshing, but far more often, merely confirmation of a preference.

Heavy Metal

The blazer wall (part of it, actually) at Tender Buttons.  

    Where did I come into the idea that, with perseverance and an easy attitude, a suitable blazer button would make itself known through the piles of uninspired, unentitled, ugly, and unworthy?  Why should I ever have thought something handsome and understated would have found me?  I suppose some naiveté can be forgiven; the internet promises vast choice, but remarkably few viable leads.  And even trace impatience erodes the delicacy of the task.  Choosing a blazer button demands respect for what’s at stake: the finished garment’s character.  

    The smart shopper will know in advance what the things on buttons mean.  At the top and most explicit level, school, club and military emblems.   These are easy to eliminate from a search if one has no attachment to the institution.  Paradoxically, these are the most prevalent.  They tend to be intricate, colorful and loaded with busy symbolism.  My impression is they are more secret handshake than understated elegance anyway.  Generic symbolism comes next.  These cast a broad net: lions (monarchy), thistles (Scotland), anchors (nautical), but always strike me as adrift in vagueness.  Does the thistle-wearer endorse an independent Scotland?  Will the anchor-wearer blush if asked about his boat?  A subspecies of this category is the literal symbol: golf clubs, racquets, guns, foxes, pheasants, ducks etc.  These are safe for the sportsman who wields or shoots at one of these, but, again, what if the wearer just likes water fowl?  The rarest category is the blazer button free of anything literal or symbolic—the metal disk with some subtle machining or nothing at all.  This is what I’m after.  

    Keep in mind though that no garment is ever entirely free of association.  A tank-top means something; so do horn-rimmed spectacles.  A navy blazer with metal buttons, regardless of what appears on them, will register some association with those who encounter it.  My intention is that my blazer registers as a blazer rather than an orphaned suit coat; I am relying upon metal buttons to some extent, but also upon the textured hopsack cloth and gently swelled edges.  Put another way, the buttons are only part of the display.

    New York City’s Tender Buttons was the most promising brick-and-mortar source.  While a charming place, the choices are either very specific (Civil War uniform buttons set in 18K gold) or, and it pains me to say this as the place really is lovely, rather generic.  Online (or through a tailor) new buttons can be had from two premium English sources: Holland & Sherry and Benson & Clegg.  The former offers an edited selection of generic and literal symbols alongside a handful of plains all in solid brass, some enameled or plated in precious metals.  The latter offers much the same at a lower price point as well as school, club and sporting buttons.

    The wild card in this endeavor is the wider marketplace—the public auction or street vendor.  Perhaps one has Welsh or Swiss roots, or was born in Hong Kong or Auckland.  Perhaps one’s uncle was a paratrooper, a crack shot or a wizard.  Maybe the albatross or loon is a point of personal fascination.  Buttons featuring all of these exist waiting to be snatched from the ether.   A family friend recently sent me an image of some buttons she found at a market with hopes of deciphering the strange symbol of a chimeric creature wrapped about a gothic column.  I haven’t turned up anything yet; if she wears them perhaps someone will one day approach with an elaborate handshake.  Now that would be a good button story.

What the Blazes?

These Royal Welsh Fusiliers blazer buttons are lovely, but not suitable for civilian wear.  Beware military and club associations to which you aren't entitled.  

    An advertisement for very expensive ready-to-wear suits caught my attention the other day, and not for the clothing, which seemed to be struggling to contain the muscular model within, but for the great difficulty the copywriter had in describing the various ensembles.  He or she did well enough with colors, although I cringed when I read gray flannel described as “battleship wool.”  Parsing the type of garment was where efforts failed entirely.  Suits were variously referred to as “jacket with matching pants,” “coat with trousers” and a “blazer.”  That last one was a real howler: it was written beneath a photo of a double breasted chalk stripe suit.

    Blazer is probably the most widely abused men’s clothing term.  I wonder if this has something to do with the somewhat more exciting experience of saying it aloud versus the mundane, monosyllabic coat or suit.  Maybe blazer just makes for better copy, accuracy be damned.  The other reason might be its relative isolation within the masculine wardrobe.  From a marketing perspective, tweed is for picking apples in autumn, suits are for boardrooms, and seersucker is for summer weddings and garden parties.  Because the blazer doesn't neatly fit one of these niches it explodes into the in-between spaces, surfacing when convenient as a term for anything vaguely jacket-shaped.  

    The quick and dirty version of blazer history has the single breasted version originating as a brightly colored rowing club jacket, and the double breasted version emerging as a civilian interpretation of the Royal Navy’s reefer jacket.  This is a plausible, if tiresome, convergence of stories.  Like most origin tales, though, retelling them gives the impression that one day the blazer did not exist, and the next it did.  That’s silly; like a cummerbund or a pair of jeans, the contemporary conception of a blazer is a product of slow emergence and eventual familiarity.  Put another way, the blazer is as much an idea as it is a garment.  

This hopsack makes other hopsacks question their relevance.  

    But we rely upon certain visual cues in order to identify that idea.  The blazer has metal buttons, for instance, to distinguish it from the jacket of a suit.  Of course my last two blazers had horn and mother-of-pearl buttons; both were handsome and still somehow registered as blazers.  Ticket pockets, patch pockets and swelled edges (slightly raised seams) are all sporty details found on various blazers, but none are compulsory.  The cloth itself should probably have some un-suit-like character.  The pronounced twill of serge, the mottling of flannel and the basket-weave effect of hopsack make all those cloths good candidates.  But suits can be made from all three too.  Slippery, no?

    I’m wrestling with these details at the moment.  I’ve had for some months a particularly hopsack-y hopsack in a deep navy sitting on a shelf with the vague idea of making it into a traditional blazer.  This cloth has so much character that I wondered for a while if that alone would be sufficient in distinguishing it from an orphaned suit jacket.  But when else would I use metal buttons?  So I’ve decided on those too.  Whether they should be brass, silver, bronze, gunmetal or copper is still very much undecided.  I also like the idea of swelled edges, because, again, when else would I have them?  The trick, if it qualifies as one, is to use enough detail to establish the garment as a blazer, without distracting from what should be a garment as elegant as it is useful.  An extra detail might easily become one too many.

Volume Button

Fairly plain matte horn buttons rein in linen--a cloth know for having plenty of character of its own.  

    Choosing buttons for suits and odd coats is no arbitrary task.  The general principle is buttons should harmonize with the cloth they adorn—dark brown and black with dark cloth, pale grey and tan with lighter cloth.  I even have inky blue horn buttons on a navy double breasted suit.  But what if contrast is desired?  Or what if a particularly mottled horn button just looks good on a length of cloth?  Button choice can adjust how conservative or fun a finished garment will be in infinite increments, like a tuning knob on a transistor radio.  I knew this in a vague sort of way, but the concept came sharply into focus on two recent warm weather suits.

    One of these suits has patch hip pockets as well as a patch breast pocket—a first for me.  The cloth is a very handsome light brown, something the merchant has romantically named “Tabac” for its resemblance to Connecticut shade tobacco leaf.  The result is a casual suit, if such a thing any longer registers with people who aren’t clothing enthusiasts, and while this doesn’t bother me, I did want some element to help temper the effect.  Enter buttons. Lighter ones—even something lustrous like mother of pearl—would have been in keeping with the casual cloth and styling of the suit, but restraint won out, and matte horn buttons in a harmonizing shade were chosen.  The suit now clings—by the buttons alone—to some slightly more formal echelon.

The cream and bone tones in these horn buttons bring out the lighter elements of the cloth, including the faint overcheck.  

    Worsted, open-weave wool, commonly known by the trade name Fresco, is a strange beast.  In one sense it is a conservative cloth in familiar blues and grays with limited pattern choice and an almost rough, utilitarian hand.  But a closer look reveals a rich mottling created by the high-twist yarn, an incredible porosity, and a springy resilience better suited to sportswear.  It was the latter rather than the former I wished to emphasize on the other of these two suits.  Once again, buttons suggested themselves as the solution.  Chris Despos and I entertained several options of horn buttons, splashing each across my length of “Derby Gray” Fresco.  It was a waste of time: the clear winner was a highly variegated tan, cream and brown horn usually reserved for odd jackets.  Once installed, the effect was immediate, dispelling any stuffiness of the cloth, edging the suit pleasantly toward the casual side of things.  

    Dialing in the character of a garment with buttons can be an enjoyable aspect of clothing, bespoke or not.  But it can also easily be overthought.  Worse, one can easily become lost in the arcane: where, on the formality scale, do smoked-mother-of-pearl buttons exist in relation to two-hole polished bison horn?  The very best scenario involves a bolt of cloth and bin of buttons.  This might encourage an urge to experiment, but once the novelty has worn off, one learns that buttons can pleasantly contrast, but in most instances should all but disappear.