History's Relevance

19th Century Origins

Edwardian Era (1900s, '10s)

Jazz Age (1920s)

Classic Age (1930s)

War & Post War ('40s, '50s)

Jet Age ('50s, '60s)

Peacock Revolution ('60s,'70s)

Classic Revival (Pt 1: late '70s)

Classic Revival (Pt 2: 1980s)

Dress-Down Days (1990s)

Classic Age: Black Tie’s Golden Age

No other era could have produced such a sartorial success.   Since the culmination of the dinner jacket’s design in the late 1930s, men’s fashion has yet to improve upon the genius of its original design or the unimpeachable refinement of its accoutrements.

Dressing the Man: The Art of Permanent Fashion

• Expanding Appeal

Remarkably, the greatest chapter in the history of evening wear is the era marked by the Great Depression.  Despite the financial hardship of the times the practice of dressing up for special occasions was more popular than ever as was the variety and elegance of formal apparel available for those occasions.

Much of this increased popularity derived from the dinner suit’s adoption by new segments of society.  A 1930 ad by formal wear manufacturer S. Rudofker’s Sons (predecessor to industry giant After Six) jubilantly proclaimed that the habit of dressing for the occasion previously confined to the “idle rich” had now expanded to include the masses: “Business Men, Truck Drivers, Collegians, Farmers, Office Workers, High School Youths: They're All wearing Tuxedos!"  

• Comfort and Style

A primary factor in the dinner suit’s surging appeal was surely its corresponding improvements in comfort.  “Before the thirties,” explains menswear historian G. Bruce Boyer, “a gentleman’s dress kit consisted of an evening suit (whether a dinner jacket, tails or both) of eighteen- to twenty-ounce wool serge or barathea; an evening shirt of heavy cotton, board-stiff with starch; a silk top hat or opera hat; a voluminous dress overcoat and the various accessories and jewelry . . .  It boggles the mind, nay the whole body, to understand how any but the stateliest dances could ever have been negotiated.” 

Few developments were more instrumental in improving the comfort of evening wear than the shift towards softer and lighter-weight fabrics.  The worsted wool used for after-dark attire became increasingly lighter than that used for regular suits and well-dressed men attending tropical soirées could opt for dinner jackets made of cotton drill, linen or silk tropical worsted.  Washable fabrics were also becoming popular in formal apparel at this time.  As the After Six corporate history sums it up, “tuxedos were finally being made for dancing.” 

Most of the other significant trends in comfort and style during the 1930s had actually already appeared in the late 1920s.  Originally confined to elite social circles, these fashions were now gaining widespread acceptance thanks largely to the influence of the eminently stylish Prince of Wales.

Midnight Blue

The Prince’s debonair choice of color hit the shores and stores of America in a big way in 1934 and was frequently described by enthralled menswear journalists and formal wear advertisers as being “blacker than black”.  A September 1935 Fort Worth Star Telegram article devoted entirely to the topic shed further light on the new shade’s allure by describing how it had originally been made popular by “a small group of English noblemen and cosmopolitans” and was then imported to the United States by Hollywood movie stars.  As a consequence, mills making the fabrics for formal dress reported that the sales of blue were expected to equal or even exceed those of black that season.   

Double-Breasted Jackets and Soft-Front Shirts

Previously considered too informal for evening wear due to its lack of accompanying waistcoat, the double-breasted dinner jacket’s popularity skyrocketed in the early thirties thanks once again to Britain’s royal paragon of menswear.  The future Duke of Windsor invariably paired the swank coat with a soft-front pleated evening shirt featuring attached turndown collar and soft French cuffs rather than the traditional starched front shirt with stiff detachable wing collar and single cuffs.  The overall result, explains renowned haberdasher and author Alan Flusser, was a look that “brought a new level of informality to the traditional dinner jacket - but with no lowering of the standards that separated those who dressed correctly from those who simply dressed up.” 

Although period etiquette experts made sure to note that the appropriateness of these innovations was limited to the most informal of occasions – particularly summer evenings – the new jacket model nonetheless rivalled the popularity of the single-breasted by 1935.  Its lapels were usually peaked and grosgrain was the favourite trimming.  As for the contemporary shirt style, the November 1937 issue of Esquire noted that the turndown collar had superseded the traditional wing collar by the mid thirties and was "now virtually standard for informal wear". 

Because the British had always considered the stiff-front shirt to be inappropriately formal for a dinner jacket, London shirtmakers in the 1930s created a semi-formal equivalent for those who preferred something dressier than the soft pleated model.  The Marcella shirt they devised was distinguished by its semi-stiff front, collar and cuffs fashioned out of the same piqué that had been introduced to full dress shirts in the preceding decade. 

Waistcoat

The 1920s fashion of wearing a full-dress waistcoat with the informal dinner jacket remained popular in London and France in 1930 according to Men’s Wear thanks to its frequent appearance on the Prince of Wales at Continental resorts.  However, by 1933 the inaugural issue of Esquire painted a different picture when it reported that “The white waistcoat has at last been allowed to rejoin its lawful but long estranged mate, the tailcoat, and the new dinner jackets are matched with a waistcoat of the jacket material, with dull grosgrain lapel facing.”  The renewed popularity of the tailcoat in the latter part of the decade further reduced the appeal of the mixed breed combination although some etiquette professionals including the esteemed Emily Post would continue to recommend it as a more formal alternative for decades to come. 

Mrs. Post’s 1937 book didn’t even deign to acknowledge the colored silk models that were being worn by more avant garde dressers in the mid 1930s.   Conservative gentlemen continued to express their individuality through their choice of single-breasted or double-breasted models with either a U or a V-shaped front opening.  They also had the option of the traditional full back style or the newer backless style introduced in the previous decade by England’s regal maverick.  By the time the Prince had become king in 1936 Esquire was reporting that his more comfortable alternative had become the preferred style in London and was moving in the same direction in the United States.

• Warm-Weather Black Tie

The decade's final innovation of note is one of the few that were not inspired by the Prince.   Instead it was a response to the challenge of dressing for formal evenings in tropical climates poorly suited to the heavy, heat-absorbing black material that was standard for dinner jackets.  Well-heeled Americans summering in Palm Beach and aristocratic Britons vacationing in the Caribbean required a cooler variation of their warm-weather finery and their solution would prove to be as classical as the original.

The Mess Jacket

The widespread acceptance of white coats for summer evening wear can be pinpointed to the 1933 rage for the mess jacket, a civilian counterpart to military formal wear that resembled a tailcoat cut off at the waistline.  According to Esquire’s Encyclopedia of 20^th Century Men’s Fashions, they were made in white linen or cotton gabardine and worn with “high-waisted lightweight black dress trousers, a stiff-bosom shirt, a narrow cummerbund in black, bright red, or dark blue, a wing collar, and a black butterfly bow tie.”

The jacket's popularity was short-lived for a couple of reasons.  Its primary disadvantage was that the cut was unbecoming to anyone with a less-than athletic build.  Its second drawback was that it was quickly adopted as a universal uniform for bellhops and jazz bands and few gentlemen of any fitness level wished to be mistaken for hired help or entertainers.

White Dinner Jacket

While the mess jacket had lost favor among better-dressed gentlemen by 1936, its color remained in vogue.  In fact, that year white jackets for summer had become as popular as black and midnight blue.  In its August 1936 issue, Esquire defined the quintessential warm-weather semi-formal evening wardrobe:

This year, the big swing is to single- or double-breasted [light colored] dinner jackets, collar and self lapel facings.  These are worn with tropical dress trousers, patent leather oxfords or pumps, a white, soft shirt with either soft or laundered collar and a black dress tie.  Midnight blue, calculated to look blacker than black after nightfall, is also an acceptable shade for the trousers.

Warm-Weather Colors

The white dinner jacket in turn paved the way for other colors in summer evening coats and soon hues such as plum, dark green, wine and bright blue were being worn on the moonlit patios of Palm Beach.  As Esquire’s Encyclopedia explains, color coordination was the next logical development: “Dark red was the important note in bow ties and cummerbunds, and black hose often had red clocks.  Red and cornflower-blue boutonnieres lent a final dash of color.”

Cummerbund

Englishmen serving in British East India had long ago adapted the local practice of wearing a sash around the waist to protect the body’s core from the physical ravages of the excess heat and humidity of the tropics.   They eventually adapted this kamarband into evening wear and exported it back to Europe where it was hardly a resounding success.  One French fashion magazine described it in 1873 as a “wide belt that constitutes yet another grotesque fashion whose slovenly appearance hardly requires mention.” 

The subsequent reappearance of the newly modified and renamed “cummerbund” fared much better thanks largely to its pairing with the popular mess jacket.  By 1937 The New Etiquette was describing it as a “popular and chic” waist covering for evening wear at resorts.  “It is meant for hot weather to obviate the necessity of having the harness of a waistcoat over the shoulder and back when it might be uncomfortably warm.  On the right people at the right time it is decorative and correctly in the spirit of colorful gaiety.”  

As the author alluded, the cummerbund was often used to infuse warm-weather formal wear with color and even patterns such an India Madras design shown in the June 1937 issue of Esquire.  In reality though, black continued to be de rigueur for waist coverings worn with the white dinner jacket.  The narrow formal sash could also be correctly matched with a black tuxedo according to the author, but only when those tuxedos were worn at resorts; the acceptance of sporting cummerbunds year round was still at least a decade away.

• 1930s Etiquette: Semi and Formal

Paradoxically, while evening wear’s attire grew less rigid throughout the thirties, its related dress code actually became more so.  It was as if the Depression had “stiffened the standards of formality in after-dark apparel” as Esquire commented in 1937 and experts everywhere noted the return to Edwardian principles.  “Each garment is now put in its proper place, judging from the clothes seen on various occasions,” reported the Fort Worth Star Telegram in September 1935.  “The traditional standard of a tailed coat and white tie being necessary for wear to any formal affair attended by ladies holds true today.” 

Even In circumstances deemed appropriate for black tie, there were new rules to regulate its new fashions.   The double-breasted jacket and soft shirt were restricted to informal occasions and the June 1937 Esquire article “Summer Evening Dress” was typical of period insistence that there was a specific time and place for the recently introduced colored coats:  “Dinner jackets for warm weather use are correctly worn at country club dances as well as at large parties in the country and aboard ship.  When dressing in town the black or midnight blue dinner jacket is preferable.”  And when non-neutral colors were permitted they generally remained limited to accessories such as the cummerbund, socks, boutonniere, handkerchief and jewelry.    

Despite its apparent downgrading to Edwardian strictures, the tuxedo actually underwent a promotion of sorts during this time as the traditionally informal outfit began to be labeled as semi-formal by some authorities.  A more colloquial designation also arose in this decade, one that focused more on the difference in appearance than the distinction in correctness:  black tie and white tie were now becoming part the common lexicon.

• Golden Sunset

By the end of the 1930s the tuxedo had reached its apex in both popularity and design.  As Allan Flusser summarizes in Style and the Man:

No other era could have produced such a sartorial success.   Each step of the dinner jacket’s evolution was measured by the perfection of the outfit it intended to replace – the grandfather of male elegance, the tailcoat and white tie . . . The new dinner jacket projected a level of stature and class equal to that of its starched progenitor, albeit while providing considerably more comfort.

Just as the previous war had ended the pre-eminence of the tailcoat, so too would World War II bring a close to the dinner jacket’s golden age.  Although the tuxedo’s style would safely survive the ensuing conflict its status would never be quite the same in the modern world that would emerge after 1945.