Why you never fasten the bottom button on a suit jacket. It started with a fat king…

On a two-button suit jacket, you never fasten the bottom button. People call it a rule, but it's really an accident. Around 1900, King Edward VII — a man with a 48-inch waist — got too big to close his, so he stopped trying. You can't out-dress a king, so the court followed, and within a generation tailors were cutting jackets around the gap. The cuff buttons have an even stranger origin. Surgeons, once lumped in with barbers, set themselves apart with a wool frock coat they wore at all times. To operate without taking it off, they had Savile Row tailors cut working buttonholes into the sleeve to unbutton, fold back, operate. The coats are gone, but the buttons stayed.