Vitreous hand-enameled double-sided cuff links
Deemed The Dressiest, Double-sided Cufflinks Are Also Ranked The Most Prized And Coveted Cufflink Design By Fashion Dandies And Connoisseurs, Alike. Despite Nearly Extinct In America, It's Atlantic City's Baade II That Remains One Of The World's Last, Remaining Makers of Double-sided Cufflinks.
• "Single-sided Cufflinks With A Decorative Panel On Just One Side Suggests The Wearer Could Only Afford The Decorative Design, Gold Or Gemstone On The Outside," Satirically Mocks Luxe Fashion Designer and Noted Style Scribe, Alan Flusser.
Despite remaining Europe's dominant cuff link design since the early-1700s and their continued embrace by the world's best dressed fashionistas, double-sided cufflinks have virtually vanished in America. Thank American's ignorance of fashion protocol and custom, along with the far cheaper cost and added convenience of single-sided cufflinks, for the American demise of double-sided cufflinks.
Today, New Jersey-based Baade II remains one of America's last, remaining makers of double-faced cufflinks. For more than two-decades, the still-family-
It was during the lavishly gilded rule of Louis XIV - famed for the ostentatiously baroque Palace of Versailles - that France's flamboyantly bejeweled aristocrats realized their wristbands offered yet another opportunity to flaunt their wealth and power. Until then, men's and women's ruffled wristbands - aristocrat and peasant, alike -- tied together with "cuff strings."
By the late-1600s, Europe's royalty and aristocrats were fastening their shirt sleeves with boutons de manchette, or "sleeve buttons," typically identical pairs of colored glass buttons joined together by a short "link." Hence was born the "cufflink."
Gilded cufflinks would continue to be all-the-rage among European and American aristocrats for the next 150 years. Cuff strings, their low-brow predecessor, would remain the fashion provenance of the poor until the mid-1850s.
By the end of Louis's post-Renaissance reign in 1715, simple, paste-glass buttons had given way to pairs of two, decoratively painted or jeweled studs, typically diamonds, connected by ornate gold links.
Hence was born today's "double-sided,"
The noted sartorialist, G. Bruce Boyer, Town & Country's one-time fashion director and the world celebrated author of countless fashion tomes, is another advocate of double-faced cufflinks. Innovatively, Boyer adds tie-clips and collar-bars to double-faced cufflinks, then coins the term, "shirt jewelry" to describe the trio. "Simple wrist watch and shirt jewelry rank the only adornment appropriate for a sophisticated, gentleman's-
Add the often quoted fashion historian, Andy Stinson, author of the upcoming Iconic Fashion Classics. A Storied History of Fashion, to the roll-call of double-faced devotees. "Admittedly, double-sided cufflinks are twice the cost of single-sided links," tells Stinson. "And granted, it's a lot easier and far quicker to let the 'slacker' inside us take-over and push a rounded post through four cuff holes.
"But it's resisting a 'slacker' mentality that so cogently explains why fashion connoisseurs and cognoscentis, alike, wear double-faced cufflinks, exclusively:
Beside their convenience and the far cheaper cost of single-sided cufflinks, thank middle-class America's ignorance of fashion decorum and protocol for the demise of double-sided cufflinks in America. Still, that only partly explains why double-sided cufflinks have vanished from America, despite still flourishing throughout Europe. Trace their fatal coup d'etat to American inventor, George Kermentz.
In the 1880s, George Kermentz, a Newark, New Jersey, jeweler and inventor, began mass producing single-sided cufflinks from a converted, Civil War-era cartridge shell machine. Hence was born the "single-sided"
Once combined with the earlier debut of electroplating, Kermentz's invention kicked-off one of America's first, mass market fashion crazes: The first, inexpensively priced cufflinks affordable to America's fast emerging clique of middle-class office clerks. Hence was born the world's "white collar" versus "blue collar" social strata.
The unrivaled depth and vibrantly bold, kaleidoscope of colors that signature Baade II's designs are created by true, Vitreous hand-enamels using either cloisonne or champleve techniques, each a near-extinct art form. A centuries-old but now near-vanished artisan jewelry technique descended from the ancient Egyptians, Vitreous hand-enameling is created by over-layering, then hand-polishing, layer-after-
Thank the Victorian-era's legendary taste-meister, George "Beau" Brummel, for anointing Vitreous enameled cufflinks the only jewelry appropriate for men; a tradition that still holds sway, to this day.
In the 1820s, Brummel publicly railed against the lavishly gilded and theatrical peacockery of men's fashions, ending a bejeweled, menswear legacy that dated to the late-1600s rule of Louis XIV's. Overnight, he rejiggered aristocratic wardrobes, tells Stinson's Iconic Fashion Classics, transforming hand-enameled cufflinks into the only fashion jewelry considered appropriate for men.
Beside linked styles, Baade II also interprets its double-faced, hand-enameled designs in "snaps," ala a button-snap style closure, as well as rigid shank, "dumbbell" shapes and wrap-around "harps," all born in the early-1800s and still faithfully recreated in both classic and contemporary design motifs by Baade II artisans.
About Baade II: For over two-decades, Baade (Bay-dee) II, an Atlantic City-based artisan hand-maker of true, Vitreous hand-enameled cufflinks, has produced a limited edition collection of hand-crafted, men's and women's cufflinks and formal suites. Fashion cognoscentis and luxury connoisseurs, alike, hail their brilliantly colored, hand-fired designs as America's - and arguably, the world's - very finest, artisan-wrought personal jewelry.
Since its 1988 founding, hand-enameled cloisonne and champleve designs have remained the company's flagship design signature. Today, Baade II's wide ranging array of over 500 differing, limited edition designs - all meticulously handcrafted in America and now including precious and semi-precious stones as well as novelty styles - are retailed by over 300 of America's premier specialty retailers, from Barney's New York and Mitchells of Westport to Beverly Hills' iconic menswear retailer, Carroll & Company.
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