If you want a quick way to tell whether a jacket was made with genuine care, look at the buttonholes. Not just whether they are hand-stitched, though that matters, but at how they are stitched. The bar at each end. The cut of the opening. The way the thread lies. A hand-stitched buttonhole on a well-made jacket is remarkably consistent, tight and even, with a bar tack at the end that stops the cut from travelling. A machine buttonhole is recognizable immediately. The stitches are uniform in a mechanical way, and the opening is usually cut after the stitching, so the cut threads of the fabric show inside the hole.
The time it takes
Working a buttonhole by hand can take a tailor up to 45 minutes for a single hole. A two-button jacket with working cuffs, meaning cuffs where the buttons actually unbutton, has eleven of them: two at the front, one on the lapel and four on each sleeve. The tailor spends several hours on buttonholes alone.
How a buttonhole is worked
The opening is cut with a small chisel and a button gauge, a tool shaped to the exact diameter of the button being used. The cut follows a single thread of the fabric, never at an angle to it. This matters because a cut made off the grain is more likely to fray and stretch over time. Once the cut is made, it is worked in two directions from the centre outward, using silk buttonhole twist. The stitches are made over a core of thread called the gimp, and the gimp raises the finished buttonhole slightly from the surface of the fabric. This lift protects the edge from wear.
The thread wraps around the cut edge with each stitch, creating a cord-like border around the opening. On the visible side, the stitches form neat parallel lines. On the underside, they form a diagonal pattern. At the end nearest the edge of the jacket the stitches fan around a small round eye, where the shank of the button sits; the other end is closed with a bar tack, a tightly wound bar of thread that stops the cut from travelling.
When a client runs their thumb along a finished buttonhole, the sensation is of something raised, firm, and densely worked. It does not feel fragile. Machine buttonholes, particularly on lower-grade garments, often feel thin by comparison, and the cut edge is less protected.
Working buttonholes is one of the most skill-specific parts of tailoring. It is learned over years, and the speed and consistency of a tailor's buttonholes is a direct indication of their experience. On some of the finer jackets we have seen, particularly older work from established London houses, the buttonholes are extraordinary, genuinely uniform from the first to the last, evidence of someone who had done nothing else for 20 years.
Working cuffs and the lapel
On working cuffs, the buttonholes serve a function that chest buttonholes do not. They genuinely open and close. This means the tension of the stitching needs to be right: tight enough to hold the edge securely, relaxed enough that opening the button does not stress the fabric. A working cuff on a properly made jacket is one of the small pleasures of bespoke. You can roll your sleeves back without removing your jacket, and the buttons actually do something.
On the chest, the lapel buttonhole is often the most visible piece of work in the entire jacket. It sits at eye level. Its proportions affect the balance of the chest. Getting it right is worth the time it takes.
Why it matters
There is a practical argument for hand-stitched buttonholes beyond the aesthetic one. A machine-worked buttonhole is finished all at once and cannot easily be repaired. If the stitching wears or a thread breaks, the usual solution is to rework the whole thing by machine, which means different thread, different texture, visible repair. A hand-worked buttonhole can be repaired in exactly the same manner it was made, stitch by stitch, with matching thread. Done well, the repair is invisible.
The buttonhole is not the most structurally significant part of a jacket. The canvas, the collar setting, the shoulder construction, all of these affect the overall fit more directly. But the buttonhole is the place where care either shows or does not. On a jacket made without it, you can be reasonably certain that other shortcuts were taken too.
