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 I (Late '70s)

Classic Revival II (1980s)

Dress-Down Days (1990s)

Classic Revival II: Black Tie Redux

We appear to be on the threshold of a period rivaled only by the 1930s for distinguished wearables.  A better period, in fact, because today there’s more variety and much more comfort in formal attire.

  Elegance: A Quality Guide to Menswear (1985)

• Welcome to the Party

The conservative wave that had begun its approach in late 1970s hit America’s shores with full force in the 1980s.  Marriage and formal weddings were once again fashionable, etiquette books had become bestsellers and Victorian and Edwardian traditions were being rediscovered by many.  

The dinner jacket's upscale renaissance of recent years blossomed into a mainstream love affair thanks largely to the influence of a certain Hollywood actor-cum-president.  Elected in 1981, Ronald Reagan popularized not just conservative politics but also conservative fashions.  “He wears formal wear often and looks good in it,” observed the president of Lord West in 1985.  “We haven’t had this influence in formal wear since Kennedy”.  Tuxedos were back in black, not just in the pages of men’s fashion magazines but also on the backs of just about every groomsman in the country.   

At the same time, the popularity of black-tie affairs snowballed prompting a Virginia newspaper to observe in 1988 that “what was confined to a September to May party circuit has now become a round of year-round social events.”   In the midst of the economic orgy that inspired the now-classic film Wall Street, it was not unusual for affluent gentlemen to attend over a dozen black-tie occasions per year while decked out in $2,500 Dimitri dinner suits or $975 Versace silk waistcoats.  

• The New Wave

As the seventies drew to a close black tie began to take on contemporary embellishments that would eventually become identified with eighties fashions.  The omnipresent wing collar shirt tended to have miniscule wings, the pre-tied bow tie was usually not much wider than its band and the cummerbund and jacket lapels were similarly narrow.  Red was the color of choice for these skinny accessories as well as for the newly rediscovered pocket square. 

Of course not every formal dresser wanted to look like the quintessential eighties wedding usher.   For more conservative functions a stylish gentleman could choose from tasteful contemporary flourishes such as velvet or alpaca dinner jackets, black-on-black patterned tuxedos and pumps of velvet or suede.  

Informal Formal Wear

At first, designers continued to temper the return to formality with a sense of fun and irony.  This was a natural extension of the New Wave collage style of dressing wherein disparate articles of clothing were layered together to create a unique look that defied standard categorization.  At the more casual end of the spectrum everyday clothing was infused with a formal twist by dressing up a sports jacket and parachute pants with a wing collar shirt, for example, resulting in a sort of “formal casual” look (see sidebar). 

Further along the scale was “informal formal” – a popular buzz word in the pages of GQ during the decade’s early years.    The mindset behind this dress-down approach seemed to be that as long as you were wearing a wing collar and a bow tie then your outfit qualified as formal – even if said shirt sported a button front and colored stripes.  Particularly fashionable (and practical) was the mixing of existing wardrobe accessories with formal fundamentals, such as the substituting of a cashmere sweater vest for a waistcoat, a four-in-hand tie for a bow tie, and a lizard skin belt for silk suspenders.  

• Black & White Formality

“Informal formal” aside, the New Wave variations in the early part of the 1980s differed significantly from the tampering of the previous twenty five years in that they generally respected the fundamental principles of evening wear rather than contradicting them.   This was indicative of the continuing influence of the classic renaissance that had begun in the late seventies, described by GQ in its annual formal wear review of December 1984:

To be sure, the Thirties remain the inspiration: double-breasted dinner jackets with peaked satin or grosgrain lapels; dress waistcoats of cotton piqué or fine worsted; morning trousers and woven-silk cummerbunds; bib-front stiff-wing -collared formal shirts.  The accessories - from watch fobs and stickpins to deftly folded, crisp linen pocket square - also evoke another era. 

Menswear editor and author G. Bruce Boyer went one step further contending that “We appear to be on the threshold of a period rivaled only by the 1930s for distinguished wearables.  A better period, in fact, because today there’s more variety and much more comfort in formal attire.”

As the decade progressed formalwear styling became only more conventional. In its 1987 annual formal wear review GQ noted that:

Black tie, of late, has returned to just that, black ties.  The red, yellow and paisley of a few years ago have bowed out, for at least the time being.  With single-breasted dinner jackets, the waistcoat - especially the odd (nonmatching) waistcoat continues to gain ground on the cummerbund.  This further reflects formal wear's overall emphasis on its English roots.

Thanks to the proliferation of black-tie summer affairs, the ivory dinner jacket had also been resurrected with all its stylish aplomb.  Even the piqué shirt with detachable collar – the ne-plus-ultra of black-tie shirts - had returned to the spotlight.  Suspenders were back in vogue too, now that the self-supporting waistband was declining in popularity.

Ironically, the informal notched lapel which had virtually disappeared from the dinner jacket in the unconventional 1970s returned to popularity during this otherwise conservative period.    In fact, in 1988 John T. Molloy’s New Dress for Success reported that it was “the model worn by most executives today.”

• '80s Etiquette: Old School

Attire

Just as in the previous decade, black tie’s return to classic styling did not necessarily coincide with a return to classic etiquette.  Cross-pollinating black-tie attire with white-tie tailcoats or morning dress trousers, referring to the tailcoat as a “full dress tuxedo” and depicting fashion models simultaneously wearing a cummerbund and waistcoat (topped off with a white bow tie no less) are just a few examples of how GQ continued the muddying of formal dress codes that had begun in the previous decade.  

As for the traditional etiquette experts, just when the extraordinary formalwear revival made their guidance more essential than ever, the 1980 Amy Vanderbilt and 1984 Emily Post editions radically reduced their black-tie guidelines to little more than recommendations to wear classic attire to semi-formal evening weddings.  To the former book’s credit, the previous allowances for unconventional colors and flourishes at summer ceremonies had now been replaced with advice to stick to the traditional white dinner jacket.  The latter author, on the other hand, continued to make exceptions for color and patterned jackets at other less formal occasions, especially in summer.

Into this void of black-tie sartorial counsel stepped two paragons of masculine style.  In 1985 menswear designer and GQ contributor Alan Flusser published Clothes and the Man, the same year that G. Bruce Boyer, men’s fashion editor for Town & Country, issued Elegance: A Quality Guide to Menswear.  By drawing on principles established in the golden age of male attire, both writers provided readers with more detail about proper formal wear than anything published since that era.  Thus, at a time when most fashion authorities were simply reporting on what was currently considered acceptable, Flusser and Boyer dared to dictate what was traditionally considered correct.  In their books popular contemporary shortcuts such as notched lapels and self-supporting waistbands were panned while classic flourishes like wing collars and suspenders were glowingly praised.      

Three years later the seminal 1970s men’s style guide, Dress for Success, was revised and re-titled by author John Molloy.  While the formalwear section was still vastly inferior to most other contemporary authorities, it was apparent that Molloy had gained much more knowledge of, and respect for, the tuxedo in the intervening years. 

Providing an interesting insight into the status of black tie in the business world, Molloy reported that many executives considered a tuxedo to be an essential part of a gentleman’s wardrobe and counseled ambitious employees that “invitations to company affairs that read ‘black tie optional’ should be read as ‘black tie for all those who are sophisticated enough to own a tuxedo’“.  The book placed a new emphasis on adhering to classic principles (“ruffled shirts are only appropriate on MCs in strip joints”) and did a complete about-face on a number of its prior guidelines including its earlier advice that clip-on bow ties were perfectly acceptable. 

Occasion

While the vast spectrum of attire that had recently been considered acceptable for black-tie affairs had narrowed significantly by the eighties, the general concept of a sliding scale approach to formality had become entrenched in modern etiquette.    “In the face of bent, if not broken, fashion dictates," advised GQ in December 1982, "let the event determine the liberties suited for veering away from evening clothes’ classic rigidity.”

Consequently, the arrival of Black Tie Optional and Black Tie Requested dress codes in the late seventies and early eighties was likely as much an attempt to help guests situate a formal occasion on this sliding scale it was a (misguided) effort to avoid alienating more casually inclined invitees.  The Creative Black Tie code would not be far behind considering the formal attire featured in a 1983 GQ pictorial that included a traditional dinner jacket and formal shirt paired with distinctly unconventional jeans, cowboy boots and a black ten-gallon hat.   

Regardless of how it was worded, the Black Tie code was appearing on more invitations than ever thus "ushering formal dressing into a twelve month affair" according to GQ.  The increased popularity of dressy weddings and proms in particular helped generate one of the formalwear industry's best seasons ever in 1985.  

More significantly, black tie’s rising popularity was not limited to affairs where it was decreed by invitation but also included occasions considered formal solely by tradition.  “Used to be that you had to wait for a prom, a wedding, or some other occasion at which you wished you were dead,” remarked the authors of Esquire Etiquette in 1987, “but that’s all changed now.  It’s perfectly acceptable these days to don a tuxedo for the theater, the opera, the ballet or even dinner at a nice restaurant.”

• Towards a New Century

The black-tie boom of the 1980s was a fitting tribute to the 100^th anniversary of the introduction of the dinner jacket.  The venerable tuxedo had begun life as a rarely used alternative to formal evening dress consisting of a heavy wool suit and cardboard stiff shirts.  In the ensuing years it had evolved to include lightweight fabrics and soft shirts, devolved into pasteled and ruffled aberrations then was reborn in all its classic glory.  While its long term future was less than certain in a casual age that had long ago led to the demise of most other types formal wear its immediate survival was assured by the imminent arrival of the greatest celebration the world had seen in a thousand years.