Quality Details: Working Cuff Buttons

It's simple: the more workmanship involved in creating a garment, the finer it tends to be, whether you discover the piece in a designer boutique, in a dress agency/consignment store, or at a flea market.

A cheaply made, fast-fashion jacket would never feature working cuff buttons--ones that can be eased through finished buttonholes, as opposed to decorative buttons that are all dressed up but nowhere to go.

These days, a working cuff isn't terribly useful on a jacket. It's not there to be used but because it's part of the tradition of fine tailoring--a standard to be met and appreciated.

It's also a very good indicator that a given piece of clothing isn't a counterfeit. An earnest counterfeiter could easily sew real Chanel buttons onto a faux Chanel jacket, but a working cuff is simply too complicated to fake.

Quality Details: Fine Buttons

All buttons are not created equal, especially the little white ones that you find on dress shirts and blouses. They come in two versions: mother-of-pearl, or plastic that has been cunningly treated to imitate mother-of-pearl.

The pearl ones are, of course, finer. They have minute, subtle gradations of color that only nature can confer, and gleam as if lit from within.

The plastic ones gleam too, but in a uniform way, like pearlized nail polish.

How to tell the difference with one quick glance? Flip the button around. The back of the true mother-of-pearl button will be rougher, unfinished, or may show evidence of the darker outer shell from which it was punched.



Who notices such tiny details? You do, once you start paying attention. And once you start paying attention, you won't stop.

Chaos Theory Meets Thrift Store Bargain

I'm no expert on chaos theory, but I do know that the most commonly used image of its workings is this: a butterfly beats its wings in one part of the world, eventually resulting in a hurricane in another. In other words, small effects at one point can have unexpected and seemingly unrelated effects in the future.

So it happened with a traffic jam in Paris in 1972. Fashion designer Celine Vipiana was stuck in the famous roundabout at the Arc de Triomphe. Bored, impatient, she found herself seeing as if for the first time the heavy black iron chains that ring the monument. She saw in their oblong links the ideal new logo for her fashion house, Celine. The "Blazon Chaine," as it's known, superceded the house's previous interlinked "Cs," (which were perhaps a little too similar to rival Chanel's).

Celine the fashion house began in 1947 in as a children's shoe store, but by the 1970s was dressing the mamans as well, in comfortable, classic, travel-ready separates that embodied the relaxed chic of ready-to-wear. Up against competitors like Rive Gauche and Chloe, Celine would never be at the cutting edge of fashion, but was instead producing clothes of reliable quality and "correctness" so dear to the French haute bourgouises (this would all change when the company was bought by conglomerate LVMH in the '90s, bringing in Michael Kors to infuse it with his brand of haute glam, but that's another offshoot of the story . . . )

Mine began a few days ago when I was in for a quick browse through my beloved local Oxfam charity shop/thrift store. I was there to drop a bag of clothes off, not pick anything new up, but I can never resist going around the corner to the ladies' section when I'm in there, because you never know.

The situation was not hopeful. I'd had a quick scan down the rails and nothing was leaping out, until I caught sight of a bit of metal near the bottom of a garment. Metal on garments that doesn't have a direct functional application like a button or a zip is usually not a good thing, because it's almost invariably a cheap bit of embellishment that would have been better off left off.


But this was different. A short chain, like half a bracelet, sturdily sewn onto a pocket of a gray cabled cardigan, one of a pair at hip level. Heavy links, nicely plated, and, best of all, enameled with cabochon rounds-- an expensive process that resulted in a subtle effect. The chains matched the buttons, which were also enameled, and bore at their centers interlocked backing "Cs".

The label? Celine. The vintage? I can't be sure, but I imagine it dates to sometime in the 70s, when the interlocked Cs were still heavily in use and the idea of a "blazon chaine" as a new logo coming to the fore.

The cardigan, by the way, is gorgeous. Classic, chic, and an outright steal at £6.99 (about $10.99).

And it just goes to show that a traffic jam that happened in Paris decades ago gave metal links an unexpected role in design history, just as metal links on an otherwise unexceptional rack of clothing found another unexpected but very happy place in my wardrobe.