Accessories

The ori­gin­al mean­ing of the word “ac­cess­ory” is an op­tion­al, sec­ond­ary, or ad­di­tion­al ob­ject. However, choos­ing a cer­tain ac­cess­ory to match an out­fit of­ten takes longer than choos­ing the suit or dress it­self. Ac­cessor­ies are usu­ally ele­ments of cloth­ing or jew­elry, de­signed to dec­or­ate and com­plete an out­fit. They care­fully and un­ob­trus­ively sup­port the over­all style and en­hance the de­sired im­age.

Cuff Links

Tra­di­tion­ally, small met­al fasten­ers called cuff links (or studs) are used for clamp­ing men’s shirt cuffs in ab­sence of but­tons. Cuff links are re­garded as a male ac­cess­ory, but, be­ing a com­mon dec­or­a­tion for ladies' busi­ness at­tire, nowadays fe­male cuff links are in fash­ion as well. On one hand, cuff links are a sort of ar­cha­ism and vestige of the pre­vi­ous cen­tury; on the oth­er hand, they are the typ­ic­al type of fasten­ers used for cuffs of the most fash­ion­able and ex­pens­ive suits. Cuff links made of pre­cious metals look rather at­tract­ive and may go well with an el­eg­ant and re­served suit. Cuff links are usu­ally worn with French cuff tuxedo shirts. French cuff shirts sleeves have cuff-lapels at the end and do not have but­tons; they are al­ways fastened with cuff links.

Cuff link types dif­fer in they way they at­tached to the cuff. The most form­al type are called double-face cuff links be­cause they have two sim­il­ar-sized faces con­nec­ted with a met­al bar. Chain cuff links also have two faces, but they are linked by a chain. Snap-on cuff links have two sep­ar­ate faces that snap to­geth­er through the cuff; these must be placed se­curely or they may slide and dam­age the but­ton­hole. Push-through cuff links have one roun­ded end which is pushed through the but­ton­hole. These are less dif­fi­cult to put on, but they are less se­cure and may slide or fall off. Hinged back cuff links have a swiv­el­ing bar at­tached to the hid­den part of the cuff link that rests un­der the sleeve. This bar locks and se­cures the cuff link as it pushed through the but­ton­hole.

The dec­or­at­ive sur­face of cuff links is greatly di­ver­si­fied. Clas­sic­al cuff links are usu­ally sym­met­ric­al, but mod­ern fash­ion of­ten re­quires some non-stand­ard designs. This is why asym­met­ric­al cuff links are also pop­u­lar - they can bring a fresh note even to the most of­fi­cial and re­served out­fit. Also, there are vari­ous theme cuff links which cor­res­pond to the theme of a cer­tain event; func­tion­al cuff links with a built-in com­pass or a watch; and fancy cuff links made in a shape which sym­bol­izes one’s hobby, oc­cu­pa­tion, or one’s world­view or tastes.

Belt Buckles

A buckle is a fasten­er that clasps a belt. The oth­er end of a belt is some­times covered with a piece of met­al called the tale-bil­let. The first buckles ap­peared in Europe in the early 5th cen­tury BC. They ori­gin­ated from small semi­circle brooches called fib­u­las, which fastened cloaks with a help of a pin. Nowadays, buckles are used not only in cloth design but also in bags and vari­ous oth­er dec­or­at­ive ele­ments.

Mod­ern belts nor­mally don’t have the met­al bil­lets. In­stead, they are usu­ally made of leath­er with a cer­tain num­ber of pin­holes. Cheap belt buckles are made of plastic, steel, or si­lu­min al­loy. However, there are still some jew­el­ers who con­sider a belt to be a sig­ni­fic­ant part of an out­fit and who cre­ate qual­ity belts with me­tic­u­lously de­signed, hand craf­ted belt buckles. Jew­elry belt buckles may be made of sil­ver and gold. In ad­di­tion, de­pend­ing on the maker’s skills, they may be dec­or­ated with gems, en­grav­ings, or in­lays. Cus­tom belt buckles are usu­ally craf­ted as three-piece sets, in­clud­ing the buckle, the keep­er, and the bil­let, as you can see on the Prair­ie piece made by Dmitriy Pavlov.

Bolo Ties

Bo­lo ties (some­times spelled bola) may be re­garded as the most an­cient type of tie. They pre­sum­ably ori­gin­ated from pre­his­tor­ic male dec­or­a­tions worn around the neck and dec­or­ated with bone or stone am­u­lets. Bo­lo an­cest­ors were used for sup­port­ing col­lars. The con­struc­tion of a bo­lo tie has re­mained the same throughout this ac­cess­ory's en­tire his­tory. Today, the same as hun­dreds of years ago, it con­sists of a thread, both ends of which are passed though the body of the bo­lo tie to bind it to one's neck. The dif­fer­ence between the mod­ern bo­lo and its an­cient an­cest­or is in the pur­pose: the mod­ern bo­lo is a dec­or­at­ive ac­cess­ory while the pre­vi­ous ver­sion was a func­tion­al ele­ment of cloth used to hold a col­lar.

European people now tend to wear clas­sic­al tex­tile ties, but Nat­ive Amer­ic­ans have kept to the an­cient tra­di­tion even dur­ing re­cent cen­tur­ies. In fact, the bo­lo tie it­self is a tra­di­tion­al Nat­ive Amer­ic­an ac­cess­ory that has re­cently come in­to fash­ion all over the world. Al­though they don’t nor­mally go with ex­pens­ive, el­eg­ant suits, bo­lo ties may be a per­fect solu­tion for men who tend to com­bine clas­sic­al out­fits with non-stand­ard ac­cessor­ies or for those who simply don’t like clas­sic­al ties.

Pop­u­lar fact­ory-made bo­los are usu­ally made of stain­less al­loy, which hardly can be called pre­cious. If you are look­ing for something spe­cial, a skilled jew­el­er can pro­duce a sil­ver or plat­in­um bo­lo tie dec­or­ated with fine en­grav­ing and pos­sibly with one or a few re­served gem­stones.