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Green’s Dictionary of Slang

button-down adj.

also buttoned-down

[the button-down collared shirts from Brooks Brothers (New York) that are the uniform of the US business establishment]

(US) conforming, holding establishment, conservative values.

1959		S. Bellow Henderson The Rain King 309: He was no cold-storage, Ivy League, button-down, broken-hipped civilian like you.
1960		H. Ellison ‘Memory of a Muted Trumpet’ in Gentleman Junkie (1961) 107: One of the button-down boobs let out a [...] whistle.
1977		C. McFadden Serial 32: A superstraight with a button-down banker’s mind.
1990		S. Morgan Homeboy 4: She’d fallen in [...] love with the buttondown square of the millennium.
1995		J. Stahl Permanent Midnight 66: A tall, buttoned down man who’d started out penning Newharts.
1999		Guardian Rev. 3 Dec. 2: Baxter was the quintessential button-down schnook.
2005		B. Woodward (ref. to 1966-1972) Secret Man 193: [N]ot all FBI men are alike. Some agents are well defended within their official persona and play to the stereotype—buttoned-down, tight and by-the-book.