I believe there are two issues at work.  One is that men, particularly younger men, are becoming more interested in classic style.  A recent New York Times piece says the same thing.

“The older generation, say 45-plus, look upon success as being able to dress down,” said Marshal Cohen, the chief analyst at NPD Group, which tracks retail sales. “They think being able to wear jeans is the epitome of achievement.

“But the younger generation is looking at getting dressed up and making their mark,” Mr. Cohen continued. “It’s a real generation gap here. I teach at three different colleges, and I am amazed how dressed up some of the students are. Girls still come in their hoodies and pajamas, but boys come in their suits.”

I’m a little annoyed with Cohen’s use of “45-plus” as the beginning of “the older generation,” but even a hard truth is still truth, and in this case I am gratified to see it.

The second issue is something that has always been true, that there are men who will pay for excellence, who will sacrifice for something better, something above the ordinary and average experience.  As the younger generations assert themselves more completely, I hope for great things.

With that, please enjoy Mr. Alden’s video and Happy Holidays to you.

Men’s style: A visit with John Hitchcock from Michael Alden on Vimeo.

Evening Wear

It seems to me that a good starting place is probably a discussion of what, exactly, we’re discussing and its history and etiquette.

First, the term “tuxedo,” as well as its even more vulgar cousin, “tux,” are singularly American in origin, coming to us from New York.  In 1886, New York socialites James Brown Potter and his wife Cora took a holiday in England, where they happened to meet the Prince of Wales at a ball.  The Prince invited the Potters to visit Sandringham, his estate in Norfolk, and when Mr. Potter inquired about the dress code there the Prince recommended that Potter visit his London tailor and purchase a “dinner jacket,” a short garment of his own design that he preferred to the tailcoat, worn with a rakish black bow tie.

Upon returning to New York, Potter wore his new dinner jacket to his gentleman’s club, Tuxedo Park.  There, several members including Pierre Lorillard (of the well-known tobacco products family) admired Potter’s new clothing a great deal, declared it to be more appropriate than the tailcoat for informal dinners, and had copies made by local tailors for their own use at the club. (One envisions the Drones Club at this point.)

One evening, several members of the Club went together wearing their dinner jackets to Delmonico’s, the only dining establishment in the city that didn’t require men to dress for dinner.  The Tuxedo Park gentlemen explained to the other diners who had never seen such a getup that this was how the members preferred to dress for dinner at the Club.  Thus, dinner jackets came to be known in the United States as “tuxedos.”

There was still a common understanding, however, that at any function where ladies were present the tailcoat was the expected form of dress, and that this new tuxedo, or dinner jacket, was only appropriate for stag events, such as dinner at the Club.

The aforementioned Pierre Lorillard, clearly a rake and a bounder, violated all known standards of decency by attending Tuxedo Park’s first Autumn Ball wearing his short jacket.  He was dismissed, of course, for being inappropriately attired, and the society pages of the newspaper reported that Lorillard “looked like a royal footman.”

Despite the indignity heaped upon Mr. Lorillard, the black tie dinner jacket, or tuxedo, if you must, grew in popularity and quickly supplanted the white tie tailcoat as the preferred dress for more formal occasions.

It is interesting to note that the concept of dressing for dinner was originally to change out of clothing worn all day when the primary mode of transport involved a horse, with the smell and grime that attends that form of locomotion and city life in general.  After the advent of the automobile, the custom remained as an indication of one’s refinement, always wishing to be as attractive as possible when meeting for social engagements.

The dinner jacket is always considered evening wear, it is improper to be worn during daylight hours, the only exception being when an event begins in late afternoon and is expected to last well into the evening.  Of course, in the summer months it doesn’t get dark until nearly 10:00PM, so etiquette experts have defined “evening” as beginning at 6:00PM or at dark, whichever comes first.

Obviously if a dinner jacket is inappropriate prior to 6:00PM, something else must be considered appropriate formal wear before that hour.  That something is morning wear, and we will discuss that in the next post.