Tuxedos

Black tie is a dress code for formal evening events. Its primary component is the dinner jacket as it is known in the United Kingdom, the northeastern United States, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and the Republic of Ireland. more...

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The jacket and matching trousers are typically called a tuxedo in the United States and Canada, and a smoking on the European continent and Japan. It is also humorously called a penguin suit since it matches the general color scheme of the bird type's plumage.

Black tie is today worn at a wide variety of functions, and the corresponding female attire can range from a short cocktail dress to a long gown, depending on fashion, local custom and the hour at which the function takes place.

History

Beau Brummell is often credited with the invention of the formal dress code during the early nineteenth century and for appearing at formal functions dressed in black and white when more colourful attire was more the order of the day. As a member of courtly circles until his estrangement from the Prince of Wales, his influence on others led to the style of dress becoming the norm.

Until the 1880s the only accepted form of evening dress was what is now known as white tie, worn with a tailcoat with peaked lapels and silk facings.

The black silk bow tie and the short mess jacket are of military origin -- black silk bow ties were and still are worn by British naval and military officers in ball dress and mess dress when their civilian counterparts are in white tie.

Henry Poole & Co. of Savile Row has record books that state that they made a "short smoking jacket" for the Prince of Wales in 1865. This appears to have been worn by the Prince with a black bow tie, and the fashion was copied by various gentlemen in his circle. When it first appeared, the dinner jacket was referred to more commonly as a 'dress lounge', because it was an evening dress form of the lounge suit. It was strictly reserved for small less formal private gatherings in the evening, especially in the country, but white tie was still the preferred dress for large societal gatherings such as balls and state occasion.

The story of the dinner jacket coming to be called a tuxedo in North American English is erroneously attributed to an occasion in 1886 when a scarlet smoking jacket with satin faced lapels was worn by Pierre Lorillard at a white tie event held at Tuxedo Park, a country club in New York. In fact it was James Brown Potter who was the first American to wear a dinner jacket, a form of dress he adopted on the suggestion of Edward VII (then Prince of Wales) when he invited Potter to dinner in the country with him while he was on a visit to England. On Potter's return to New York, the dinner jacket was widely copied and worn at informal dinners at the Tuxedo Club. Eventually someone from the Tuxedo Club dared to also wear his dinner jacket to formal events and as a result it came to be called the 'tuxedo'. This name is now avoided by certain fashionable sets in the United States, in favor of the usual English terms "dinner jacket" and "black tie".

Read more at Wikipedia.org