The dinner jacket began its life by asking permission to be less formal.
Through much of the nineteenth century, a gentleman dressing for a formal evening entered a system whose distinctions were obvious to everybody who mattered. The tailcoat belonged after dark. The frock coat and, later, the morning coat belonged to the day. Clothing announced time, place and degree of ceremony before its wearer had spoken.
By the 1880s, another evening coat had entered the wardrobe. It borrowed the easier shape of the lounge jacket and removed the tails. It was worn with a black tie rather than the white tie of full evening dress. The Museum at FIT dates the introduction of this less formal evening ensemble to the 1880s and notes that during the following decade it gained acceptance for evenings at home and in gentlemen’s clubs. In Britain it became the dinner jacket. In the United States it acquired the name tuxedo.
“It became recognizable by refusing very much change at all.”
The important word was less.
A man did not originally put on a dinner jacket because an occasion demanded maximum ceremony. He wore it because full evening dress would have been too much. It was a relaxation of a rule, although a relaxation so precise that it soon acquired rules of its own.
That may explain some of its longevity. Clothes that begin as proclamations often become trapped in the moment that produced them. The dinner jacket began by removing something. Its chief innovation was absence.
The shape settled slowly. Early examples remained close to the black evening coat from which they descended. By the 1930s, the garment had reached one of its most confident periods. Double-breasted versions appeared. Midnight blue joined black. London tailoring softened the chest and broadened the shoulder. The Museum at FIT describes the decade’s dinner jackets as following the new lines of the London Lounge suit, with a fuller chest, broad shoulders, a controlled waist and a close hip.
Very little was needed after that.
This is unusual in fashion. A dress preserved in a museum often carries its date openly. Sleeve, waist, hem and shoulder tell us when it belonged. A well-cut dinner jacket from several generations ago can be more elusive. Details change, sometimes badly, but the central proposition remains familiar.
Black cloth. White shirt. Dark silk at the lapel. A narrow vocabulary used carefully.
Its restraint also made the dinner jacket available for reinterpretation. Marlene Dietrich wore masculine evening dress on screen in Morocco in 1930, making the authority of the tuxedo part of the image. Decades later Yves Saint Laurent made the woman’s tuxedo one of the defining ideas of his house. The garment could cross gender because its meaning was already so well understood.
An icon usually survives by becoming recognizable enough to tolerate change. The dinner jacket managed the harder task. It became recognizable by refusing very much change at all.
The modern wearer can buy one cheaply, commission one on Savile Row, find one in Naples, or inherit one from a father whose shoulders were almost the same size. The price changes. The cloth changes. The invitation still says black tie.
There is something reassuring in this. Luxury spends much of its energy persuading us that a new thing has arrived. Formal dress occasionally reminds us that an old solution may already be good enough.