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How fortunate women are when evening dress is mandatory. Tuppence on a flour sack, a dash of ancestral diamonds or imitation bling and the lean and young are ready for the fray; a couple of velvet curtains, a patchwork quilt, a tasselled cord, a dozen safety pins and the woman old and stout will sail like a galleon from the Orient into the candlelight of any company. But what for men?
Men are committed to the dinner jacket, the black uniform of which the cut of the silk-faced collar and lapels are the only permissible variations. It may vary vastly in price and age - perhaps 2,000 guineas and bought yesterday, perhaps inherited through generations, the cut and quality impeccable, let out and taken in, the cost no more than that of alteration - yet, as all are black and seen only in the crowding of a formal dinner, none of us can tell the difference.
I have worn mine only at intervals of years, decades even - invitations commanding it are almost invariably refused - but last week I was caught out and had to dig deep into neglected cupboards. In these I found six jackets and five pairs of trousers, of which few fitted or cross-matched. One jacket only was broad enough to comfort my now rounded shoulders, and one pair of trousers, but in a very different black (it is an infuriatingly variable colour). They were, moreover, high-waisted, button-flied, braces-hung and had the air of far antiquity about them.
Inherited in the late 1940s, when the rationing of clothes was still in force, they recalled my adolescent rugger-playing Young Conservative days when all boys were compelled to dance the fox-trot and the quickstep (I could never tell the difference and always had to ask the girls).
There was then a panic over braces, but I found them tucked away with black silk socks, and another panic when I tried to tie the tie and found that I have lost both the logic and the knack.
I told my host of my mismatch, hoping he would settle for my absence or an ordinary suit: he would not, and brusquely suggested that if I was happy with the jacket I should buy "some interesting trousers".
I forbore to ask "What, pray, are they?" but later wished I had, for, just as the women were decked in simple sacks or a multitude of frills and furbelows, quite half the men at his beano were indeed in interesting trousers, Highland tartans and fierce mustard checks among them, peacocks all, like cavalrymen displaying their fine legs.
I am no peacock but I fancy joining them. However, before I embark on the extravagance of trews in the sober Cameron tartan to which, by proxy, I am almost entitled, I need reassurance. Can one really turn up to a bit of a do at Boodle's or Buck House thus garbed?
Reader views (6)
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- Jack, Suzhou China
You've missed the far more important sartorial question: real black tie or pretied (by the manufacturer) bow tie?
Now, until recently, the fake tie was always derided, but now so few correctly know how to properly tie the bow, the pre-tied tie is accepted. No?
- William Paul, L.A., USA
Evening dress is about as out of date as Brian Sewell's suits! Come on, you pretentious people who insist on evening dress - we're in the 21st century! It's a coded way of saying "Yes, I am better than the rest.", or "Yes, I would like to be better than the rest, but despite wearing this form of dress, patently am not."
Why not be honest and put "no riff-raff" on your invitations and have done with it, because that is the hidden agenda behind "black tie". I have only ever attended one black tie "do" in my life, which I was obliged to do as chairman of a charity, and will never, ever attend another. I have great respect and admiration for Brian Sewell - would I respect and admire him any more because he was in "black tie" garb?
- Keith Cordell, Llangollen, Wales
Peter: you are dead right. No kilt south of the Border; and trews and a mess jacket are a great idea. I had mine made a couple of years ago. Mind you, you've got to have the right shape to fit them.
Tiara (good name in the circs): you're right, but there are now so many tartans associated with so many people, places, and things that Mr Sewell ought to be able to find something.
- James Mcleod, London
Love Brian Sewell's turn of phrase; it looks like he got his vocabulary out of the back of the wardrobe along with the forty-year-old suits.
Never wear tartan if your'e only "almost" entitled; it's a faux pas equivalent to wearing track suit bottoms.
- Tiara, Brighton
Brian, of course you can wear trews, preferably in a skin tight 'mess kit' cut with patent Wellington boots. And might we offer you the tartan of one of our now sadly defunct Scottish regiments ? What about the fetching Mackenzie tartan of the HLI in the light 'Saxony' shade. But remember - although you may wear a sporran with your breeks, never a kilt below the Highland Line.
- Peter Haldane, London
