A cufflink is one of the smallest objects a man will own and one of the few he will handle every time he wears it. It has a single job with three parts: to hold two thicknesses of cotton closed, to stay square through a long evening, and to come away at the end of it without a struggle. In practice most cufflinks fail at least one of the three, and the failures are so familiar that people assume they are simply part of wearing a French cuff. They are not. They are the result of decisions taken, or not taken, at the bench.
Davidoff is a name most people know first for cigars, and the Basel house's accessories carry the same instinct for selection into metal. A Davidoff cufflink is not an elaborate object. What it is, when you look closely, is a resolved one, and the resolution lies almost entirely in parts you will never see.
Three problems, one small object
The first problem is closure. A French cuff has four layers of fabric once folded, two on each side, and the link has to pass through all of them and then lock. The second is orientation. Once through, the decorated face should sit level with the outer edge of the cuff and remain there as the wrist turns, reaches, rests on a table and comes up again several hundred times an evening. The third is release. At the end of the night the link has to come out cleanly, without the bar catching in the buttonhole or the face dragging through it.
Each problem has its own mechanical answer, and they interact. A link that sits well but sticks on the way out gets bent in the process and then sits badly for ever after.
Weight and balance
The commonest fault in a cufflink is a head that is too heavy for its bar. The decorated face carries all the visual weight, so a maker who is thinking about appearance rather than wear tends to give it all the physical weight too. The consequence is predictable: the cuff rotates under the mass of the head, and by the second course the motif is facing the floor.
A well-made link avoids this by distributing mass on both sides of the wrist. The back piece, whether a swivel bar, a fixed bar or a second smaller head, is given enough substance to counterweight the face. The two parts then hang in equilibrium, and when the cuff is disturbed the link returns to level on its own. It is a matter of grams, sometimes of fractions of a gram, and it cannot be judged from a photograph.
The length of the post matters here as well. Too short and the link binds the cuff, bunching the fabric and making both insertion and removal a fight. Too long and the two halves flop apart, so that the counterweight no longer does its work. A good post length accommodates four layers of shirting comfortably and no more.
The toggle
Most modern cufflinks close with a pivoting bar, sometimes called a toggle or a whale-back. The bar swings in line with the post to pass through the buttonhole, then swings across it to lock. The whole mechanism depends on a small spring or a friction hinge that holds the bar in one of those two positions and resists sitting anywhere between them.
That resistance is the heart of the object. It needs to be definite: loose enough that the bar swings freely when you mean it to, firm enough that it does not fold on its own when the cuff catches on a sleeve or a chair arm. A toggle that drifts is the reason links are lost in taxis. A toggle that is stiff is the reason they are forced, and forcing a small hinge is how it is bent.
You will never see this spring. It sits inside the hinge housing at the end of the post, and it is the single component that decides whether the link is still in service in ten years or in a drawer with its bar hanging limp.
The alternatives
The pivoting bar is not the only mechanism, and the others each have a case to make.
- Fixed-back links have no moving parts at all: a face, a rigid curved post and a smaller solid back. They are the most durable design there is, because nothing can wear out, and they are the hardest to put on, because the whole rigid shape has to be threaded through a buttonhole.
- Chain links join two heads with a short length of chain. They sit beautifully, because both ends hang naturally, and they allow the cuff a little movement. They are also the fiddliest to fasten single-handed.
- Double-faced links use two decorated heads joined by a bar or chain, so that whichever side shows, it shows finished. They are heavier as a set, which makes balance simpler to achieve.
None of these is wrong. The toggle wins on convenience, which is why it dominates.
Finishing: the back as good as the front
Once the mechanics are right, finishing takes over, and the first place to look is the part that faces inward. On an inexpensive link the back of the face is left as cast: slightly rough, with a visible seam where the post joins. On a properly finished link the back is polished to the same standard as the front, the join is dressed flush, and the edges of both head and bar are softened so that nothing catches on the fabric.
That last detail is functional rather than cosmetic. A sharp edge on a toggle bar cuts a buttonhole a little every time it passes through. Over a year of wear the hole frays, then stretches, and the link that was once secure begins to slip.
Plating and what cotton does to it
Cotton is soft, but it is also abrasive in the long run, and it is in constant contact with the link. Every movement of the wrist rubs the post, the back of the face and the bar against fabric. Thin plating gives up first at exactly these points: the post goes dull, then a yellow or grey base metal shows through, and from the outside the link still looks fine while from the inside it is visibly worn.
Davidoff's finishing is specified with this in mind. The plating is thick enough to survive the constant rub of cotton, which is a different standard from plating that merely needs to look good in a box. Where a link uses a stone, an enamel or a lacquered surface on its face, the setting is checked for the same reason: the face is handled every time the link is put on and taken off, and a stone that is merely glued rather than set will eventually come away.
Reading a cufflink in the hand
Much of this can be checked in a minute at the counter, and it is worth doing.
- Hold the link by its post and let it hang. It should settle with the face level, not tip forward.
- Swing the toggle repeatedly. The action should be consistent, with a clear stop at each end and no sideways play.
- Turn the link over. The back should be as cleanly finished as the front, with no visible seam at the post.
- Run a fingertip along the edge of the bar. It should feel rounded, not crisp.
- Look at the post under good light. Any wear on a display piece points to thin plating.
Wearing and keeping them
A pair of cufflinks that passes these tests needs very little afterwards. Put them on with the bar in line with the post and swing it across only once it is fully through; do not force the bar through the hole at an angle. Take them off in the same way, in reverse. Store them in a lined case rather than loose in a drawer, where two hard faces will scratch each other and a toggle can catch on something and be bent.
Once a year, wipe the metal with a soft dry cloth. Avoid liquid polishes on plated pieces: they are designed to remove a layer of metal, and on plating there is not much to spare. The reward for that small amount of care is an object you stop thinking about entirely, which is exactly what a good cufflink is for.