Worn with the male Dinner Dress Blue and Dinner Dress White jackets, these 28-line silver buttons are joined with a chain fastener approximately .75” inches in length and are inserted through the two buttonholes just below the bottom of the lapels. Embossed on each button is the “Navy eagle,” which features an eagle perched on a horizontal anchor with its head facing the wearer’s right (the eagled faced the wearer’s left until 1941). Surrounding this image are 13 stars that evoke our nation’s founding, and a rope forms the button’s border.
Just as with belt buckles and tie clips, the silver color of the buttons indicates that the wearer is either a junior enlisted Sailor or a Noncommissioned Officer in a rating no higher than E-6, with gold components and accessories reserved for CPOs (E-7 to E-9), Commissioned Officers, and Chief Warrant Officers.
The notion of a Dinner Dress uniform with a design taken from the world of civilian fashion first cropped up in the Navy in the early 1870s, when a dress coat made of “blue cloth after the prevailing style of a civilian coat” was authorized.