What does it mean to Button Up?

Buttoning up is something that has been done to Ben Sherman shirts since 1963. It is a deliberate choice that exudes ‘Britishness’ and personal pride. It’s the final touch that finishes the look.

Find out what “button up” means to Ben Sherman.

Mark Maidment, CEO & Creative Director

“It was 1983 & I was thirteen when I bought my first Ben Sherman. I’d thought about it, I’d dreamed about buying this Ben Sherman. I bought it in a little shop on Beak Street in Soho, London and the thing that I learned about this shirt was that you had to do something quite special to that shirt to make it finished, to make it look right. I’d noticed that the older kids, the cooler kids who were wearing Ben Sherman shirts – they did this to their shirts. I realised it was a very special, very British thing to do.

This is about smart and sharp and it’s very, very British. It’s something that we at Ben Sherman have been doing for a long, long time.”

Martin Morris, Head of Creative

“In this one action, it represents a very deliberate style decision. Nobody does this by accident; it doesn’t just fall into place. It transcends the whims of fashion and enters the realm of pure style.

There’s so much meaning and code in this one gesture of buttoning up. It says so much more about you than just being casually un-buttoned.”

Mark Williams, Design Director

“It’s sharp, it’s smart and it’s also timeless as well. It feels really relevant and it feels modern. For me, the minute I buttoned up, that move of buttoning the shirt right to the very top, it set the level of “that’s how you wear a Ben Sherman shirt”.”