I was enchanted by this photo from the NYT of a man wearing a marijuana boutonnière. Not because I’m that interested in pot (I haven’t smoked it since I was a kid and it is still illegal here). It’s because the man’s ensemble is so Beautiful. With that crisp white shirt, open at the neck, linen blazer and pink hanky, he looks stylish and sexy. Reading the article, I learned that this was wedding attire, and that cannabis-themed weddings in the pot-legal states of Colorado and Washington are now all the rage.

I have a thing about boutonnières. I wrote a story in which the male protagonist always wears one, and favors nontraditional flowers and leaves. But according to Wikipedia, men’s jackets these days are not properly tailored to allow them to wear a flower in the lapel. There’s supposed to be a little loop on the back of the lapel to hold the flower stem in place, but more and more often, it is missing. This makes me sad…

Looking online, it appears that men simply don’t wear boutonnières anymore except with wedding attire. And the few I did find were rather fussy little bouquets like this:

The proper way to wear a flower in one’s lapel is this, courtesy of Gentleman’s Gazette:

Or this:

Some men have taken to wearing artificial “lapel flowers.” These are not as nice as real blooms, but they can also be pleasing, especially silk ones that look real:

Just don’t do the crochet ones, please.

This silk flower is quite fetching. There is something sexy about those soft, loose pink petals…

Dandies wear the boutonnière with a bow tie, but I prefer a regular tie.

Here is a little serving of male sartorial perfection:

And a slightly more rugged model of manly efflorescence: