Dear Cecil,
That was an interesting answer to the buttons on the coat sleeve question. Regardless of where you have buttons on your coat sleeves you can wipe your nose / brows with your sleeves, you will just have to twist your arm a bit.
Failing that, there is always the lapel of your jacket if you are in desperate need of a quite wipe. Somehow I do not think buttons on sleeves would have much averted scruffiness in Frederick the Great’s army.
My thoughts were that the buttons on the coat sleeve even though not functional these days were originally intended to allow the wearer unbutton his sleeves and roll them up. This was primarily to allow a gentleman avoid getting horse sweat on his coat sleeve while horse riding.
To this day, a number of bespoke suits still have working coat bottoms and an affectation is for wearers of bespoke suits used to be to leave one of the buttons unbuttoned to indicate the bespoke origins of the garment. Not so much these days as a number of people get their tailors to alter off-the-rack suits to have working coat sleeve buttons.
Any thoughts on this?
Regards,
Odia Ukoko
Melbourne, Australia