Dealing With Dress Codes

Commentary

Dress codes are back. In schools, offices, and even parties, they are popping up everywhere. The days of “You be you” are over as we’ve come to realize that there is a certain value in decorum. Equally, letting it all hang out drags down everything from education to work to entertainment. We seem finally to be done with that deeply regrettable experiment.

And yet that leaves us with a problem. Most of us don’t really know what dress codes are. School uniforms are easy enough. It gets complicated after that. This is a particular problem for Americans for historical reasons.

Here is an example.

Next weekend, I’m scheduled to attend an evening reception and dance for an event that is listed as “semi-formal or formal.” I’m pretty sure I know what the organizers mean. They are saying that men can and should wear suits but many will wear sports coats and trousers. Some will take it seriously and wear black tie.

They really should have said “black-tie optional” if that is the case but Americans don’t know these things. If it is black-tie optional, that would mean that women can wear either a cocktail dress or a formal ball gown. As it is, under the label “formal,” women will step up with their best.

What “semi-formal or formal” actually meant in the interwar period and in British Commonwealth tradition—American culture is derivative but not duplicative—is black tie (semi-formal) or white tie with coat tails (formal). In fact, for men, the only authentic and sustained meaning of the word formal is white tie and tails, no other.

Here’s what complicates matters. In the late 19th century and stretching on for decades, the new money well-to-do class started an experiment that supposedly began in Tuxedo, New York. It was wearing the garb of the footmen and servers at the table as if it were formalwear. The purpose of this was an ostentatious display of the classless culture of the United States: even the rich wear the garb of the working classes.

That’s a fine trick but it made a mess of our words. In effect, it meant replacing formalwear with semi-formal and abolishing the former category completely. That has left us in a bind that has lasted the better part of a century. The long slide consisted of upgrading casual wear to evening wear and pushing out the old definition of formal completely. This did not happen until after the Second World War.

Is there a problem if we ignore all this degradation, cultural slide, and postwar mix-ups and just wear white tie when the invitation says formal? I say do it. I shall, but I promise you that I will be the only one. How do I know? Because if the organizers really wanted black or white tie, they would have said so.

Invitations to the state dinners in the United States when welcoming Commonwealth guests plainly do this: formal, they say, adding in parenthesis white tie.

Moving on, sometimes—one would hope this doesn’t happen to you—you will see “creative black tie.” This is nothing less than a cry for help. The intention is to signal that the host wants elegance without being rigid. He imagines that a velvet jacket might substitute for standard dinner dress, or that one might wear a normal black tie ensemble but with, heaven help us, “a pop of color” in the shirt, tie, or cummerbund.

What it actually produces is anxiety and incoherence. Half the guests arrive looking like they raided a costume shop for a production of “La Bohème,” while the other half plays it safe in standard dinner dress and feels like overdressed fools. The host, meanwhile, wanted neither outcome. If you mean black tie, say black tie. If you want something less formal, say cocktail attire. “Creative” anything is simply an abdication of hostly responsibility dressed up as sophistication.

Now here is another wrinkle, actually a puzzle I’ve put off solving for decades. It concerns formal daywear. Let’s take it as axiomatic that black tie cannot be worn before 5 p.m. That’s a truth of the universe and cannot be broken lest we face the wrath of the gods. What, then, is one supposed to wear at a formal occasion during daytime, such as a day wedding or garden party?

Tradition had this all worked out. White tie and tails is formal for evening. Daytime formal is a black or charcoal tail coat (not cutaways) with grey striped pants plus a grey four-in-hand (long) tie and white vest (double-breasted ideally). That much I get.

But in America, we arbitrarily and summarily discarded the difference between semi-formal and formal so what do we do? There is no real answer here. Consider that and let me repeat: in the United States we have no standards at all for what constitutes formal daywear. By christening the liveries of the footman as formal, we broke the chain of logic and are left with nothing at all.

This is why daytime weddings are often reduced to clown shows of men wearing ridiculous outfits in odd colors as picked out by the bride’s mother who knows absolutely nothing about menswear. I would recommend against following that trajectory into the gutter of the gauche.

I’ve been variously guilty of being overly judgy on this, as when you are at the same hotel where a wedding party is about to commence and everyone is in black tie at 1 p.m.. It’s poor form but 1) no one knows that, and 2) they know no other. Sign of the times. Plus, there is a problem here. An afternoon wedding followed by pictures followed by cocktails and dinner takes us into the late evening with no time to change. This is why the 5 p.m. rule has been so relaxed (even if I and the gods don’t like it).

Lacking any real American-centric canonical answer to what constitutes formal dayware, I’m going to suggest that we really only have one option for daytime formal: black or grey tailcoat, grey-striped trousers, and a light grey tie (not a bow tie). Ascots have no sustained tradition in the United States past the Founding generation so I don’t think we can go there unless we are doing theatrical reenactment. Stick with a normal silk tie.

That’s my answer. Feel free to disagree but, if so, we will have a vigorous discussion.

To be sure, most of the above advice does not pertain to most events and parties. The code at most events these days is called “business casual,” which I believe is a nomenclature unique to the United States. It means a suit and tie. Not complicated. Does it also mean a sports coat and trousers? Maybe. It can even mean no tie, but if you try that, you can expect to get looks.

As an aside and an illustration of how mixed up this is, we have the same practical results for a code that says formal and a code that includes the word casual. How crazy is that?

The word casual here is the tipoff. Anything not semi-formal or formal is called casual. That admittedly encompasses a wide range of styles from a double-breasted suit to gym sweats. This explains the addition of the word “business.” It’s because, thankfully, we still pretend to believe a suit is what is appropriate for business, regardless of whatever dumpster dive Mark Zuckerberg performed in the 2010s to get his clothing.

In general, Americans love making up new names for dress codes. I invented one myself two weeks ago at an event I hosted at a farm. I put “farm casual” on the invitation. To be frank, I don’t know what that means. So I wore thick green jeans and braces—brass rivets on the outside—plus a linen black sport coat and light-blue tie. Whatever. It worked.

No one else wore a tie, which is fine but they all looked slightly better than one would otherwise expect. One gentleman wore a cotton beige suit and white shirt, no tie, with farm boots. It was brilliant. Somehow the phrase “farm casual” nudged people to wear something not entirely disheveled. That’s a good thing.

Now let’s talk about the term casual as left alone with no modifier. If you put that on your invitation, you had better be prepared for flip-flops and jean shorts. You permissioned this!

We must also address “smart casual,” a term that has colonized corporate America and wedding invitations alike. This is business casual’s even more confused cousin. In theory, it means something more polished than jeans and a t-shirt but less structured than a suit. In practice, it is a Rorschach test that reveals everything about the wearer’s self-image and nothing about the host’s intentions.

I have seen “smart casual” interpreted to mean everything from khakis and a blazer to designer sneakers and an unstructured sweater that costs more than my first car. The British, characteristically, have tried to impose order here with “smart casual” meaning essentially a blazer, buttoned shirt sans tie, trousers, with, of course, tacky socks. Call that what you want but it is not “dressed up,” no matter how long it took to consider the outfit.

Americans, predictably, have turned “smart casual” into a free-for-all. My advice: when you see this on an invitation, add a tie and arrive slightly overdressed.

The deeper problem here goes beyond semantic confusion. It is that we have lost the reason for dress codes in the first place. They exist not to torment guests or to enforce class distinctions, but to solve a coordination problem.

When everyone knows the rules, everyone can relax. The anxious guest need not spend the week before an event cycling through possibilities. The host need not worry that half the room will look like they are attending different celebrations entirely. There is a profound relief in clarity.

What we face now is the worst of both worlds: the return of the dress code without the knowledge of what codes actually mean, much less an understanding of their purpose. We have the form without the substance, the expectation without the tradition. The result is the peculiarly American spectacle of formal events where everyone is trying their best while carrying an air of uncertainty about whether their best is appropriate, excessive, or disastrously wrong. That’s because the center no longer holds.

I do not expect that we will return to white tie evenings even if we should. Or maybe, who knows? It could happen. But I do think we might reclaim some clarity. If you are hosting, use terms that have actual meaning. If you want the best, your designation is “formal: black or white tie optional.” If you want suits, specify business casual or cocktail attire.

If you write “creative” anything, you deserve what you get.

If you are attending, err on the side of dressed up. The overdressed guest is merely eccentric, perhaps overestimating the venue. Nothing wrong with that. You can always claim to have misread the invitation, which is a face-saving fiction everyone understands. The underdressed guest is rude: he expected less than that for which the host prepared.

The experiment of “You be you” failed because it asked too much of other people. It demanded that everyone else become an audience for your self-expression, regardless of whether they had bought tickets to that particular show.

Dress codes, properly understood, are a form of courtesy, a way of saying that you understand the occasion is not about you, but about the collective experience of everyone present. That is worth dressing up for, even if we cannot agree on what, exactly, to wear. This is the reason for the code. Better yet, the code comes to be baked into traditions. The best time to revive a tradition is now.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.