Boutonnière

After several dreams reminding me of times gone by, I thought of the Easter season and dressing up.

A boutonnière is a floral decoration worn by men, typically a single flower or bud. Boutonnière is the French word for “buttonhole”.

While worn frequently in the past, boutonnières are now usually reserved for special occasions for which formal wear is standard, such as at proms, homecomings, funerals, and weddings. (Women who wear jackets on these occasions also often may wear “buttonholes”, but more typically a woman would wear a corsage.) Nowadays, a lapel pin is worn more often than flowers on business suits.

Traditionally, a boutonnière was worn pushed through the lapel buttonhole (on the left, the same side as a pocket handkerchief) and the stem is held in place with a loop at the back of the lapel. The flower’s calyx, if pronounced such as those of a carnation, should be fully inserted into the buttonhole, which would secure it tightly, and flat against the lapel. Thus the buttonhole should ideally be at least 1 1/8" long for enough room to fit a standard sized flower’s calyx.

Now wearing foliage on your clothing might be stylish, it caused the wearer to constantly smell the flower and be stuck by the pin. Depending on the temperature in the room a flower might stay fragrant or start to lose its petals. Some girls were afraid to dance to close for fear of being stuck so the rose might as well been poison ivy.

Mother’s Day was a ritual of wearing a white or red rose to indicate if your mother was alive. Dances and formal occasions the boutonnière was as much of the uniform as the cummerbund, pleated pants, stiff shirt, cufflinks and vest.

Though lost on me like much of the dreams, the memory was a teaching I never accepted but am proud to have learned. My parents gave me the opportunity of the finder things in life and encouraged me to use them to advance my career but I went a different route.