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Double-breasted question.

reetpleat

Call Me a Cab
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2,681
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Seattle
Baron Kurtz said:
There are also stories of military types drawing their swords (worn on left). If the jacket was buttoned right over left, the opening could impede the drawing of the sword - the hilt would get caught under the flap and the right-over-left buttoner would be slaughtered mercilessly by his reverse-buttoning opponent.

Most likely apocryphal . . .

bk

So, then it would be an evolutionary development. Survival of the fittest jacket werer.

Or some intelligent tailor may have just thought of it from the start.
 

Edward

Bartender
Messages
25,072
Location
London, UK
Baron Kurtz said:
There are also stories of military types drawing their swords (worn on left). If the jacket was buttoned right over left, the opening could impede the drawing of the sword - the hilt would get caught under the flap and the right-over-left buttoner would be slaughtered mercilessly by his reverse-buttoning opponent.

Most likely apocryphal . . .

bk

It's not something I stayed with, but I did a little fencing while I was at University, and from what I recall a decade later, fencing tunics are 'handed' such that the side facing the opponent - i.e. your right if right handed, left if left handed - is the "top" side, i.e. I as a left hander would wear a tunic which fastened left over right, right handers right over left. Seems to me this makes that makes this explanation all the more plausible, but of course you never know.
 

VisforVictory

New in Town
Messages
46
Location
Brooklyn, NY
Interestingly, there is an image from the 1850s showing all the Chief Engineers of the New York Fire Department. They are wearing their regulation double-breasted frock overcoats, and they see split among themselves as to which way they buttoned up.
 

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