Double-breasted question.

[reetpleat]

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]

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]

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.

 

[Matt Deckard]

Anybody else remember when they started using rhombus to figure out how long the jacket skirt should be?