Richard Armitage and the “missing button”

Richard Armitage, worldpremiere of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Wellington, New Zealand, November 28, 2012. Detail of left jacket sleeve. Source: RichardArmitageNet.com

Since I’m hearing remarks about this in different places, I want to weigh in on it.

This button is not “missing.” It is not evidence that he was careless or his handler didn’t look at him before he got out of the car or that he was accosted by someone who stole the button as an Armitage relic! It is evidence that Mr. Armitage is joining the ranks of the people who know.

There are a lot of style rules for wearing jackets that have to be learned, especially by people who didn’t just grow up wearing this sort of thing. One rule frequently ignored by newcomers to men’s formalwear is the waist button rule. These jackets all have two buttons at the waist — but convention dictates that in wearing the suit, the bottom button is not buttoned. (And the bottom of a vest is never buttoned either, by the way.) Armitage was a bit vague on this in his early career, but photos from the last three years have revealed that he now knows and follows this rule.

A similar rule applies to the buttons on the sleeve of a men’s jacket. These buttons are purely decorative — they have no function. Armitage isn’t going to unbutton them and roll up his sleeve! They are a vestige from an age when a more numerous series of buttons went further up the sleeve and actually functioned. Because button holes are tricky to make, and an expensive detail, and these have no function, in off-the-rack clothing the buttons are often simply sewn on. You see two, three, or four — four is the most usual number for formalwear. In a less expensive suit, it is indeed a faux pas if you can’t see the buttons — because there is nothing at all underneath them. It looks sloppy, especially if a thread is hanging from where the button fell off.

But if you look at this sleeve, you will see that there are actual buttonholes sewn into the sleeve. That is not just decorative top-stitching; those are actual buttonholes. One characteristic detail of the made-to-measure and / or bespoke suit is that even though the wearer doesn’t ever open the jacket sleeve, the buttonholes actually function. This is a mark of luxury and style. This feature in a suit says to the viewer — I am the kind of man who makes sure that all the details are right — even the irrelevant ones, even the ones I will never take notice of.

The question is how to signal that style detail to the viewer, since most people won’t look all the closely at the buttons. The convention, and this is a very, very elevated style rule, is to leave the last button open. Thus the wearer signals that he is wearing the bespoke suit and everything that that article of clothing signals to the viewer.

I find this particularly moving exactly because I know Armitage didn’t grow up with all these style rules. It’s a beautiful detail that speaks movingly to his professional coming of age.

Gosh, I’m a little teary!

~ by Servetus on November 30, 2012.