![]() We think Bruce Boyer characterized the buttondown best when he wrote in his book “Elegance”: The editors in this shirt guide state that the buttondown is “the old-school, all-American look” that has “never gone out of style and never will.” GQ’s second betrayal of our nation’s sartorial heritage comes by way of the graphic below, where the buttondown is associated with liberal-arts-degree underemployment, in contrast to the semi-spread collar, which ensures rapid career advancement:īut the only thing more fickle than fashion is fashion editors, and GQ seems to have a split personality when it comes the subject of buttondowns. Going back farther, to the time when the fictitious Nick Carraway was a struggling bond salesman, the buttondown was even the chosen shirt of Wall Street. It’s not a faux pas to pair a button-down with a tie-say, if you’re going to lunch on the weekend or to see Arsenal play-but for the office, you might want to consider European wisdom and get with the dressier options.Įuropean wisdom? Didn’t we take the ingredients we wanted from European culture, cuisine and wardrobes and come up with our own way of doing things? And for much of the 20th century, as the United States rose to its preeminent position in the world, the men who were running the country (such as the gentleman from the State Department in 1959 who’s pictured above) had no qualms about doing it in buttondown collars. Surprise! The oxford cloth button-down is not a dress shirt! Don’t tell Congress or they might pass a law making it one. What is your opinion? Is the oxford too Americacentric to take abroad? Most of my dress shirts are buttondown- collar oxfords, but I recently started a job overseas and I’m receiving mixed reviews on pairing them with ties. The first instance occurs in question-and-answer format in Glenn O’Brien’s “Style Guy” column: ![]() In last month’s issue of GQ, the magazine managed to twice make an assertion that puzzled us here in Tradsville: namely, that a buttondown-collared shirt is not a dress shirt.
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