Changing for Dinner

Over the weekend, I stumbled upon this image on The London Lounge boards, and found it both utterly charming and completely hilarious. The chap on the left, dressed in what we would consider extremely formal evening wear, is roguishly picking his gloves off his fingers while the rather priggish young man to the right looks on in disdain. To our friend on the right, the first gentleman is no gentleman at all, but a cad shown up to the ball dressed the fool.

Standards of dress change…if you are reading Simply Refined, you obviously are well aware of this fact…but sometimes it is easy to forget certain lineages, and the controversy which surrounded them. White tie is almost never seen these days, but it was de rigeur for about 100 long years before the tuxedo crept out of Henry Poole’s back rooms and King Edward’s private circle to become standard evening dress. According to Poole, they created the tail-less dinner jacket in 1860 for Edward (then Prince of Wales) to wear as a smoking jacket, but it would not really gain the upper hand in the evening wear battle until World War I.

When looking at this image though, I can’t help but chuckle and imagine the young men standing to the right and left of these two. Further to the right we might see a gentleman in wig, breeches, and decorated coat, while I would imagine the man standing to the left would look ridiculous and completely alien to all three others. The twenty first century young man would most likely be venturing out in dark denim, an open necked shirt with glitzy stripes, and maybe (I dare say if we are lucky) a poorly made blazer with something screened onto the back. Suddenly a bowler, short coat, black tie, and white ash cane seem utterly civilized to our prig on the right. He might even lower that chin a bit if we ask nicely.