Double-sided cufflink recommendations?
Does anyone have any suggestions for double sided cufflinks? I'm interested in brand names I can search for on eBay—there's so many out there—or new ones under $50?
8 Replies
Kent Wang is pretty much the only one making proper double sided cufflinks
Pretty much everything else is vintage, sorry to say.
I am sure there is someone out there making new ones but I couldn't really find them, and long searches on google, ebay, etsy, styleforum, etc tell me that basically nobody makes affordable ones other than Kent Wang. Everyone else has moved to T-bar types
Part of the issue is the question of symmetry: a double sided cufflink needs to fit through the buttonhole, yet not be so stupidly asymmetric that it is no longer really "double sided." People want big cufflinks. So a big cufflink is inevitably not going to be truly double sided. Rather than putting a metal bar with a ball or plate at the end to retain, may as well just use a t-bar.
Okay, the obvious counter-example to this is the silk-knot cufflinks, those are double-sided and made by like every company making cufflinks, but I mean, other than that ...
Re: vintage cufflinks I will mention that they are easy to find and not in high demand because very few people wear french cuff shirts these days.
Yes, you can get a lot of stuff for pennies on the dollar. A lot of sterling links are sold for basically just the spot price of silver if not sometimes lower.
Plus a ton of people selling cufflinks are, like, from grandkids who have to deal with boxes of stuff, who have no idea what the hell anything is. People have stories of buying some nice looking cufflinks for $15 and realizing later they're like 14K solid gold rather than just gilded or painted. Though of course, there are bargain hunters out there looking through pictures carefully trying to find these diamonds in the rough, not worth trying to be one of them IMO - the time you trade will rarely be worth the money unless it's pure hobby
any favorite vintage brands or makers to look for?
Just go on eBay and search for something old and cheap that you like the look of.
Yeah I am sure there are brands worth looking for, but I do not know what they are. I just look for vintage shit when I look
There are some key words to find specific things. Like sterling, gold content, etc.
Occasionally you can find cufflinks made with something no longer legal to make, but those tend to be very expensive. Whether you want to care about such things is up to you
There are plenty of cool looking art deco cufflinks on eBay and Etsy. I was looking for a double sided pair for my wedding, I ended up finding a pair of snap MoP cufflinks at a steampunk convention lol. Never had any issues with the snaps coming apart despite what I had read about
Most vintage cufflinks will have no identifiable branding. If you're looking at fine jewelery (silver and gold) you might see some makers marks but most people don't know how to interpret those so you might not even see it mentioned in the listing unless you're buying from a jeweler.
Also ask your dad/uncle/grandpa if they have any lying around you might get an heirloom