The London Lounge

What material do you usually specify for your buttons? I have usually used corrozo on suits and horn on odd jackets, but was thinking of having horn on my next wuit. Any opinions?

I have requested horn in the color of the suit jacket (or black for gret suits).

What exactly is corrozo?

iammatt wrote:What material do you usually specify for your buttons? I have usually used corrozo on suits and horn on odd jackets, but was thinking of having horn on my next wuit. Any opinions?

It is a nut that when dyed takes color all the way through. It is also known as vegetable ivory.

I tend to get horn for most everything, bone occasionally, corozo rarely.

In Napoli, the standard is corozo buttons on suits and horn buttons on sport-coats.
Some customers require black horn on charcoal and navy suits, while others like the natural, mottled look of horn on their “town” brown worsted and flannel suits as well as on their “country” weed suits.
Since corozo have a coveted tendency our year after year, some die-hard aficionados (and tailors) are known to recover old corozo buttons from dismissed suits and jackets to recycle them on new bespoke items of clothing.

Recently, I had trouble to find horn buttons. It seems that the use of horn is no longer allowed, at least in Europe. Any suggestion to find these buttons?
Moreover, when are mother pearl buttons indicated?

in many "mercerie" you can find them but costano un occhio e solitamente sono sempre troppo lucidi. Un buon sarto puo fornirteli, se richiesto.

Any thoughts on mother of pearl?

I was thinking to liven up an ordinary looking SB blue blazer (now with horn or plastic buttons) with light blue or perhaps white MOP.

I use dark MOP buttons, the ones with grey metallic effect and sometimes the dark blue ones, but they are very fragile and chip easily.

uppercase, I think dark blue MOP would look perfect on your blazer. I often use MOP buttons and mine misteriously never chip. Dark brown coloured MOP are beautiful, too (not for a blue blazer, of course - just to add a shade to manicturncoat's list). I like both the look (the unique pattern of changing shades particular to every single piece), the weight (significantly heavier than plastic) and the touch (cold, like a gem, rather than warm like most synthetic materials - though horn is warm, too). Some imitations are so good that actually the only way to distinguish the original (as with various semiprecious stones, as well) is to press the object against your lips, one of the most (conveniently exposed) temperature-sensitive areas of the skin: if it's cold, it's genuine...

filangieri wrote:...some die-hard aficionados (and tailors) are known to recover old corozo buttons from dismissed suits and jackets to recycle them on new bespoke items of clothing.

I 'recovered' some beautiful horn buttons from a mothhole ridden Oxxford recently at a thrift store. They are slated to replace the leather buttons on a Norman Hilton black and white herringbone sportcoat I have.

Horn used to be a "rustic" (or informal) button material. Today it has all but eclipsed everything else in Savile Row tailoring.

I recently had a suit made with the shiny plastic (I think it is some form of celluloid) buttons that were popular for town suits before WWII and I like them a lot. The quality of the button and the neatness of handstitching / shanking are key to making it work, I find.