In praise of cufflinks

I own many pairs of cufflinks, but I wear only one. My father gave them to me for my 21st birthday. They have that date on one face, and my initials on the other. They are gold. I remember, at the time, finding the gift momentous. I’d never had anything made of gold. More importantly, my father always wore a similar pair, inscribed with his own initials and 21st birthday. They must have been a gift from his mother. In 1944, my grandfather had been gone for a decade.

My own son is 13. If, in eight years, I present him with a pair of gold cufflinks, I’m sure he will find them more puzzling than momentous. Cufflinks become rarer all the time; less seen than even the disappearing necktie, and almost as rare as a waistcoat or braces. Perhaps they are going the way of tie pins, sock garters, pocket watches or spats: old-timey accessories worn with evening dress, in movies, or by wilful eccentrics.

What’s killing the cufflink, or trying to? Generally speaking, the cause is the relentless march of the casual and the comfortable — or, more accurately, the purportedly casual and comfortable. More specifically, men wear jackets only rarely now. French cuffs can look a little awkward without a jacket. Unless they fit just right, they tend to flap around.

The bigger problem, though, is that cufflinks are not just an accessory. They are jewellery, and men today have a vexed relationship with jewellery. Wedding rings aside, a watch is as far as most men go. The watches they choose tend to be shiny, techy, tanky and, whenever possible, obviously expensive. These are emblems of material success and of action-movie masculinity. They are fundamentally adolescent.

Some men go in for the bracelets of the leather/woven twine sort, which look like they were bought on a beach vacation. Other men like jewellery from the Keith Richards/Tyler Perry/Jack Sparrow school: hoop earrings, skull motifs, chain links that look like barbed wire. Perhaps a bit of Westernalia. In short, most men have trouble wearing something that might be simply described as pretty or attractive, rather than cool. But the point of jewellery is precisely that it looks pretty and attractive.

This is all a shame, and hints at the ways many men, in theory increasingly liberated about gender, remain retrograde. The pose of informality blurs into indifference. Are we really too manly, or too laid back, to wear something decorative that looked so well on John F Kennedy or Cary Grant?

Let us, then, bring back the cufflink. How to pick the right one? Well, start with the right shirt: find French cuffs that give your wrist enough room to accommodate your (non-tanky) watch, and no more. The cloth should be substantive, but not stiff (one of the best things about buying a new pair of cufflinks, especially a first pair, is that it creates an excuse to buy more shirts). To my eye, the cufflinks should also not be too big. The visible part can be bigger than a dime, but probably smaller than a nickel (that said, I have seen several excellent pairs made from buffalo nickels). Material? I am biased here, but gold is best: it looks great, goes with everything, and men don’t wear much of it, other than their wedding bands.

You find gold too formal, or too expensive? Fair enough. But resist the temptation, too often succumbed to, of the cutesy cufflink. Little bulls and bears for Wall Streeters, shiny little dice for the gambler in your life or, heaven help us, little golf clubs and balls — all dreary manifestations of the masculine aversion to things that are just plain nice-looking. Better to look under the counter at the thrift store, where you will find the remains of cufflink-wearing generations past. Alternatively, if you can bear being a little preppy, the little woven elastic ones from Brooks Brothers or J. Press are attractive, cheap and come in many colours. Buy a bunch and throw them away when they get dirty.

But a nice pair, for red-letter days, is a fine thing to have, and it is possible for cufflinks to be fun without being cutesy. Gems can be a bit much, but cufflinks are a perfect forum for semi-precious materials — malachite, turquoise, mother of pearl, and so on. A nice pair will never go out of style and never wear out; you can pass them on to your son, if he can figure out what to do with them. 

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