Cuff Types

“Well, as long as the collar and cuffs match…”
That’s a famous quote made by James Bond in Diamonds are Forever

Many tailors allow you to choose the cuff type for your shirt. Making that decision is relatively straightforward – it all depends upon whether you want to wear cufflinks with the shirt or not. There are really three major types of cuff you will hear of:

1. The James Bond (or Turnback) Cuff
This style of cuff was first made by the Jermyn Street tailor Turnbull & Asser and then popularized by Sean Connery in the first James Bond film, Dr No., the turnback cuff combines the elegance of a a french cuff with the ease of buttons. This style of cuff is making somewhat of a comeback.

2. The Button or Barrell Cuff
This is a traditional cuff with built-in buttons. It is functional and modern, and most store-bought shirts tend to have single button cuffs. The corners can be square or angled, and a more dressier version of the button cuff has two or three buttons instead of one. Some button-cuffed shirts are convertible, which means they have buttons but also have two holes, so you can cut off the buttons to convert the shirt to be a single cuff worn with cufflinks.

3. The French (or Double) Cuff
The French cuff is the classic cuff for a dress shirt – the cuff is folded back (hence the Double) with holes to be fastened with cufflinks instead of buttons. French cuffs are often considered more formal, particularly with the use of quality cufflinks. The French cuff is best for showing a quarter inch of shirt cuff from underneath your jacket sleeve. We prefer our French cuffed shirts worn with silk knot cufflinks (also known as Turks Head or Monkey’s Fist cufflinks). French cuffs can have squared, rounded or angled corners.

Note that a fourth cuff type – single cuffs, which are double cuffs without the fold, are traditionally considered the most formal style of cuff, are usually only worn with formal evening wear (black or white tie),