Boutonnière
small floral arrangement worn on the lapel
A boutonnière (French: [bu.tɔ.njɛʁ]) or buttonhole (British English) is a floral decoration, typically a single flower or bud, worn on the lapel of a tuxedo or suit jacket.
Traditionally and most simply, a boutonnière is a single flower, worn pushed through the lapel buttonhole (on the left, the same side as a pocket handkerchief). Today boutonnières are often instead pinned to the front of the lapel, and feature more than a single stem: leaves or accents, constituting a mini-bouquet, like a smaller corsage. See § Wearing for details and variations.
While worn frequently in the past, boutonnières are now usually reserved for special occasions for which formal wear is standard, such as at proms and weddings. Women who wear jackets on these occasions may also wear boutonnières, but more typically a woman would wear a corsage. Nowadays, lapel pins are worn more often than flowers on business suits.
History
The word boutonnière derives from the French word for "buttonhole". Similar to a wedding bouquet, in the 16th century, boutonnières were used to ward off bad luck and evil spirits. It was also used to keep bad scents away and was believed to protect against diseases.
The public source identifies “Boutonnière” as small floral arrangement worn on the lapel. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Boutonnière, small and floral.
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This entry incorporates text from “Boutonnière” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.