Buttons for a tweed kilt jacket

[MNlad]

Of the four jacket conversions I have done, only one—the one illustrated earlier in this thread—has antler buttons. The reason was simple, they go so well with that particular tweed and the plastic "leather" buttons that came on the jacket screamed "imitation" across the room. I rejected the faux stag buttons for the same reason noted by Tartan Tess—they look like plastic Oreo cookies to me.

I replaced the plastic suit buttons on two other jackets with with real horn buttons. Again, because the original buttons just looked shiny and cheap and I lucked into horn replacements at an extremely reasonable price. Real horn buttons have a low sheen that plastic has a hard time duplicating and you have that slight variation between each button.

I believe I have one conversion left in me, and the candidate has beautiful leather buttons I wouldn't think of changing. It's much more a matter of aesthetics than trying to copy a particular look.

[Tartan Tess]

Great ideas here.
Just for the record, House of Edgars "stag horn" buttons dissapointed me. For what I paid and shipping from Scotland. ...they just bug me. Brown on one side and bright white on the other. They are so clean looking I think they look plastic. Just my opinion.

[frank_a]

I got some, but they're at my seamstress' place for a "new" kilt jacket (Harris Tweed conversion). The company card is in the zip lock bag. I'll see if I can have her dig it out. These buttons were NOT perfectly round, far from it, but cool none the less!

Frank

[OC Richard]

Just as an aside, to me it's interesting how horn buttons appear on tweed kilt jackets in all of my vintage Highland Dress catalogues (going back to the 1920s) yet in The Highlanders of Scotland (1860s) all the tweed kilt jackets appear to have ordinary buttons of the period (glossy plain black, looking exactly like the plastic suit buttons of today).

Yes the buttons are very small, but the paintings have an amazing level of detail, and none of the buttons appear to be the type of horn buttons we're used to nowadays. One might say that the artist ignored the actual buttons he saw, and substituted the familiar buttons of the period, but this cannot be the case: the HOS paintings display a variety of interesting buttons (just not on the tweed jackets).