What Are Cufflinks And Why Should You Be Wearing Them?

When you hear the word “cufflinks” many people believe that they are the little gadgets that men use to link the cuffs of their shirts together, and this is, of course, true. However, cufflinks are not only for men: women can wear cufflinks as well.

Yes, of course, there is the T-shirt brigade who spend all summer in nothing but T-shirts and jeans, or T-shirts and shorts, and that goes for men and women as well, but when the days begin to get shorter and the weather becomes cooler, both men and women revert to shirts or blouses because they have long sleeves, and in the winter, you need to keep warm.

All right, we confess, in our area many of the postmen (for some reason it just seems to be the postmen) wear shorts all the year round. Quite why this should be, we have never discovered. Being on the Southeast coast we tend to get fairly mild winters, but even then, we have snow occasionally, yet there is the postman in shorts!

But for most of us we wear long sleeves in the cooler months, and that goes for the women as well as the men. Now it is quite true that you can get long-sleeved shirts and blouses with buttons on the cuffs, and many people do just that. But, come on! Buttons are hardly exciting. In the vast majority of instances, they are simply small round pieces of plastic that perform a purely functional role in keeping the shirt or blouse cuffs together, and the less seen of them the better.

Yet why use a little bit of plastic when we can use something that is far more decorative to do the job of holding the cuffs together?

Of course, we are talking cufflinks, and why ever not? Many of us wear jewellery of some sort, even if in the case of some men it is just a wedding ring. But others wear rings for decorative purposes as well. Many women go to town with bracelets, necklaces, brooches, and so on, and many now have a ring in the nose or rings in the ears, and that goes for the men as well. So why not cufflinks, especially when there are so many different designs and patterns available? You can wear silver cufflinksgold cufflinkscufflinks with flags on them to honour your country of birth, very expensive cufflinks with diamonds or other precious stones in them - the choice is virtually limitless.

When you use cufflinks to hold those shirt or blouse cuffs together you can do so much more than just hold them together. You can use cufflinks to make a statement, and that statement can be anything that you want it to be. It can be “Look at me! Aren’t I clever?” “Look at me! I’m a joke”. “This is who I am: someone who respects people”. “It’s summer. Let’s have some fun!” You can say virtually anything that you want to with a pair of cufflinks.

You can do so much with cufflinks because there is an almost endless supply of designs. Google the word “cufflinks” and you come up with 84 million results. Google “women’s cufflinks” and you still get 16 million results. There is even an online shop dedicated to selling nothing but women’s cufflinks, called Miss Cufflinks.

Why should you wear cufflinks? Because they can pass on any message you want to about yourself without appearing to be bossy or be telling people what they should do or not do. A man dressed in a smart suit with a tie and wearing a pair of cufflinks simply gives the impression of someone of importance. Take a look at MPs in the House of Commons and you will see that so many of them are smartly dressed and wearing a nice tie and cufflinks. You won’t see your MP – man or woman – in the House of Commons wearing a T-shirt and jeans, whether it is summer or not.

So, think carefully about the man or woman you are, and the impression you wish to give. It can make a huge difference to the way others perceive you.