Back to the Button-Down

Remember the button-down shirt?

A masculine must during the '50s, it eventually became about as unfashionable as the codpiece. As recently as last summer, it could be found only at stubbornly conservative shops like Brooks Brothers.

Now mod is going out, moderate is moving in, and the button-down is back. Says Danny Zarem, vice president and fashion director at Manhattan's Bonwit Teller: "Men have gotten the peacockery out of their systems. They feel it's now time to return to good taste."

The new button-downer boasts longer, narrower collar points, is cut more slimly and patterned more vividly than the old standbys. The new shirt is designed, in fact, to go with the fashionably tailored men's suits of recent vintage. But no one expects the button-down to become the cliche that it was in the '50s. Says Designer Bill Blass, who is among the pioneers of the button-down this time around: "I don't want men to wear only button-down shirts. It's just part of the whole fashion picture."

Button-downs are already showing up on the well known. Among those who have bought the new models are Marcello Mastroianni, David Steinberg and Clint Eastwood. (Henry Kissinger, Frank Sinatra and Bob Newhart, who still wear the older version on occasion, are back in style.) Zarem reports that Bonwit's has sold more than 150 dozen of the Blass button-downs to New Yorkers since first offering them in October. "Response," he says, "has been fantastic. For older customers, it represents a security blanket . . . they relate to everything it represents: flannels, tweeds and oxford cloth. The younger customers see it as part of the classic revival in fashions."

Brooks Brothers, however, merely sniffs at the trend and professes never to have noticed a slowdown. "We sell as many now as we ever did," says Vice President Ashbel T. Wall. Brooks has no plans to offer the longer-collar version now becoming so popular elsewhere, and will stick with the style that it has sold so well for so many years. "It's nice," he says, "to know you're right."

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