Buttons all week, cufflinks when it counts

Quick answer: Wear buttons almost every day. Wear cufflinks when your jacket stays on and the occasion has a program, a toast, or a receiving line. Keep the links small, plain, and the same metal as your watch.

Somebody at every wedding is wearing cufflinks shaped like a golf bag. He's proud of them. The room reads them as a man who wanted to be asked about his cufflinks.

That's the whole problem with the question. Nobody judges cufflinks against buttons. They judge whether the choice fits the day and whether you look comfortable in it.

The one rule that settles most of it

Jacket on, French cuff is fine. Jacket off, or no jacket planned, wear a button cuff.

A French cuff exists to show a half inch of folded linen at the end of a suit sleeve. That's its whole job. Take the jacket off, or push the sleeves up to the elbow, and you've got a pair of metal ornaments hanging off bare forearms. It looks like you started dressing up and lost interest.

So ask one question before you pick the shirt. Will the jacket stay on for the evening? If you can't say yes, button cuffs. If you hosted the dinner and the jacket stays on until the last guest leaves, links are right.

When links earn their place

• Your own wedding, and the weddings of people you're standing up for
• Funerals, where a dark suit and quiet links say you took it seriously
• Evening events where a dark suit is the floor, not the ceiling
• An interview or board meeting at a firm where everyone else wears a jacket every day

And when they don't:

• Tuesday at the desk
• A backyard cookout, a ballgame, a church potluck
• Any day you'll be typing for six hours. A link hitting the edge of a laptop makes a small, sharp, irritating sound, and it scratches the finish.

Wearing links every day doesn't make you look polished. It makes the occasions where you do wear them look ordinary.

What a good pair looks like

Small. Plain. A plain oval or round face in silver tone is the safe default, and it goes with almost every suit you'll own. Match the metal to your watch case and your belt buckle. You don't need to match perfectly. You need to not clash.

Silk knots are the best first pair. They're cheap, they come in navy or burgundy, and they forgive a mismatched tie. They also read as deliberate rather than showy.

Skip novelty links. Skip big logos. Skip anything you could read from across a table. If a man has to explain his cufflinks, they were the wrong ones.

Pick a back that's easy to work. Swivel (bullet) backs flip with a thumbnail and don't fight you. Fixed chain links are fine, but they take patience when you're already late.

How to put them in

1. Fold the cuff back on itself so the two ends sit edge to edge. A French cuff isn't overlapped like a button cuff. It meets like the two pages of an open book.
2. Line up the holes through all four layers of fabric.
3. Push the post through from the outside, so the decorative face shows on the outer side of your wrist.
4. Flip or turn the back so it locks flat.

The second wrist is the awkward one, because you're working with your off hand. Give it the extra ten seconds. And if the bar fights you, the cuff isn't folded flat, so start over instead of forcing it.

Do this before the jacket goes on. Try it in the dark of a hotel room at 7:40 for a 7:30 wedding and you'll learn why.

The annoying parts

French cuff shirts are harder to find in a good fit than button-cuff ones, and some stores carry only a few. You'll probably need to shop for one on purpose. A wide cuff also shows off a watch that's too chunky, because a big case catches the folded fabric every time you reach for something.

You can lose links. Everybody does, once. Keep them in a dish on the dresser, not loose in a coat pocket. Keep a spare pair of silk knots in your travel bag, because a missing link on a wedding morning is a real problem and silk knots weigh nothing.

You also can't roll the sleeves easily. If you're the kind of man who ends every dinner with his cuffs pushed up, buttons are the honest choice.

Buttons, done right

A button cuff on a good shirt looks right every day, so long as the details are right.

Fasten the cuff snug. You should be able to slide one finger under it, no more. If your hand slips through with the cuff buttoned, the shirt is too wide there, and a decent tailor can move that button for a small fee. The piece on tailoring costs covers what a job like that should run and what isn't worth paying for.

Check the length. With your jacket on and your arms at your sides, a quarter to half an inch of shirt cuff should show past the jacket sleeve. None showing means the shirt sleeve is short or the jacket sleeve is long. Two inches showing looks like you borrowed it from a bigger man.

Some shirts have two button positions on the cuff. Use the inner one if the cuff is loose. If you're still buying your first good suit, the one suit to buy when you own none is a good place to start, and a plain white shirt with either cuff goes with it.

If you work somewhere that never spells out what to wear, this piece on dressing for an office with no dress code will help you decide where links belong. For most of those offices, the answer is nowhere.

So which one signals you know what you're doing?

Neither does the work alone. The man who knows what he's doing owns one good white shirt in each cuff, one plain pair of links, and wears each when it fits the day. He doesn't touch his cuffs all evening, because they're already right.

If your father or grandfather left you a pair, plain and a little worn at the edges, wear those. They'll look better than anything new you could buy. And if you have a son, give him a pair the day he lands his first real job. Polish them first.