English Gold Blazer Buttons
Menswear is about subtlety. It’s about style. It’s about taste. Good taste. Which is why we’ve preached the oft overlooked significance of the button like a broken record. The button is the handshake of the garment. It tells you (and everyone else) in three seconds everything about your jacket and the man inside it. When in gold, even more so.
“Gold were as good as twenty orators.”
Whether cut in doeskin, flannel, or hopsack, all of our house style made-to-measure navy blazers are trimmed with gold plated fox buttons by Benson and Clegg. They’re handmade in England by craftsmen following British traditions dating back to the 18th century. Our penchant for the fox is entrenched in its personification of our strap-line: The better you dress, the worse you can behave. It’s the handsome red coat that allows the fox, in the stealing of chickens, to ask for forgiveness instead of permission.
Wes Anderson emphasized this very peculiarity in his film adaptation of Roald Dahl’s book Fantastic Mr. Fox. Anderson made an auburn double breasted corduroy suit Mr. Fox’s costume de rigueur for stealing chickens, ducks, and hard apple cider to provide for his family (essentially the sartorial equivalent of a fox’s coat of fur). The red fox is the epitome of unruly behavior gilded with good intentions and style.
But we digress. Benson & Clegg was founded in 1937 by Harry Benson and Thomas Clegg in London. They are the proud holder of the Royal Warrant to His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales. What’s that? Glad you asked. A Royal Warrant of Appointment is a mark of recognition of those who have supplied goods or services to the Households of The Queen, The Duke of Edinburgh or The Prince of Wales for at least five years, and who have an ongoing trading arrangement. If it’s good enough for Prince Charles, it’s good enough for us.