Never button the bottom button of a waistcoat

Never button the bottom button of a waistcoat is a menswear convention that Patrick Bateman explains as both tradition and physical practicality. Its importance in the novel lies less in the garment itself than in the social world surrounding it: clothing is treated as a field of expertise, distinction, and rivalry, and a minor rule becomes another measure of who possesses the right knowledge and authority.

Definition and Practical Logic

The rule requires the lowest button of a conventional waistcoat to remain undone. When Timothy Price asks why, Patrick Bateman answers that the practice is traditional but adds that it is also more comfortable. The explanation therefore joins inherited etiquette to bodily ease. The rule is not presented as a mysterious law or an absolute prohibition; its authority comes from the combination of custom and use.

The Conversation About Dress

The rule appears during a discussion of waistcoats and their relation to suits. Patrick Bateman first distinguishes between subdued and bolder waistcoats according to the suit being worn: discreet pinstripes call for blue or charcoal gray, while a plaid suit permits a more conspicuous vest. Timothy Price then asks whether suspenders help the waistcoat sit better, shifting the conversation from color and proportion to construction and fit.

David Van Patten's question about the vest overpowering the suit exposes the conversation's competitive character. Patrick Bateman is mildly irritated that Van Patten has done his homework while still asking for advice, but he continues to instruct him. The bottom-button rule consequently functions as a small test within a larger performance of sartorial competence: knowledge of clothing is displayed, challenged, and defended in the same manner as other status markers.

Tradition, Status, and Consumer Culture

The rule belongs to a world in which appearances are carefully managed through expensive objects and highly visible preferences. At Pastels, Patrick Bateman introduces his new business card from a gazelleskin wallet bought at Barney's for $850, only to have David Van Patten produce a card whose eggshell stock and Romalian type provoke jealousy and admiration. The rivalry shows that refinement is not private pleasure but a competitive language, and the waistcoat convention operates within the same language of minute distinctions.

The surrounding routines reinforce this connection. Patrick Bateman describes Xclusive as a private health club four blocks from his Upper West Side apartment, remodeled three times in two years, equipped with multiple brands of weight machines, ten tennis and racquetball courts, two swimming pools, specialized exercise equipment, treatment rooms, and a cafe with a juice bar; membership costs $5,000 annually. In the office, Frederick Dibble's Canali Milano suit, Bill Blass shirt and tie, Missoni Uomo raincoat, and expensive haircut receive the same concentrated attention as restaurant names and gossip. Dress, food, fitness, business cards, and access to institutions become interchangeable signals of rank.

Narrative Significance

The bottom-button rule condenses the novel's broader tension between surface knowledge and moral emptiness. Patrick Bateman can explain the correct relationship between a waistcoat, a suit, and suspenders, and he can identify the practical reason for leaving the final button undone, yet this precision exists beside profound instability. On a Thursday afternoon he cannot remember where he had lunch or whom he met, suffers a major anxiety attack at a downtown phone booth, searches unsuccessfully for Valium, Xanax, or Halcion, and calls Jean for help before throwing his Walkman into a trash can. The contrast makes sartorial certainty look less like a stable identity than one of the rituals he uses to maintain an appearance of control.

That instability also affects the rule's social force. Patrick Bateman's world depends on people recognizing the same codes, whether they concern waistcoats, reservations, business cards, or access to fashionable spaces. Yet the same world repeatedly frustrates reliable recognition: at Dorsia, he finds an unclaimed reservation under Schrawtz and tries to devise a way for Jean to secure the table; at Paul Owen's apartment, one hundred and sixty-one days after the murders, his stolen keys no longer work and a newly installed doorman controls entry. The lowest-button convention thus participates in a larger system of visible order whose rules seem exact while identities, institutions, and reality remain unstable.