21 Rules for Black Tie: The Definitive Guide

An invitation arrives, and at the bottom, in small type, it says black tie. There is a good navy suit in the wardrobe, and the question we get on the telephone is always the same: will it do. I answer the same way every time: it will do, if you are prepared to spend the evening explaining why you came in a suit. Black tie translates simply. It means a dinner jacket, and nothing but a dinner jacket.

The rules of this code settled by the nineteen twenties and have barely moved since, which in a male wardrobe is rare. So they can be learned once. We have gathered the twenty-one rules we repeat to clients before every season of weddings, galas and year-end dinners. Some concern the jacket, some the shirt and the bow, and the last of them the things everybody forgets.

Where the black tie code came from

Until the end of the nineteenth century evening meant a tailcoat with a white tie, and the code was called exactly that, white tie. The short coat without tails that the Prince of Wales ordered from Henry Poole in 1865 was at first a domestic garment for the smoking room. But dinners grew shorter, rooms smaller and the tailcoat less comfortable, and by the twenties a black bow with a dinner jacket had pushed the white one out of every invitation except those from a palace. The name stayed with the bow: black tie means a black bow, that is, a dinner jacket; white tie means a white one, that is, a tailcoat.

Why is Fred Astaire still dancing in white tie in Top Hat in 1935. Why are half the guests at the 1961 dinner for Kennedy in white dinner jackets. Why do invitations increasingly say creative black tie. Because a dress code is a living thing and always runs slightly behind life. By the thirties white tie was already cinema, the white dinner jacket was the rule of the tropics, and creative black tie usually means the hosts have not decided.

The dinner jacket: how to choose

1. The colour is black or midnight blue. Burgundy, green and velvet belong to a dinner among friends where black tie is written loosely.
2. The lapel is peaked or shawl. The notched suit lapel arrived on dinner jackets in the seventies along with the rental trade, and gives a rental away at first glance.
3. The lapel is faced in silk, smooth satin or ribbed grosgrain. The buttons are covered in the same silk.
4. There is one button. A double-breasted dinner jacket is permissible, we make one in ivory, but the single-breasted one-button remains the reference.
5. Pockets are jetted, without flaps. Flaps are a daytime detail.
6. The cloth is a dense matte wool, never a shiny one. Which one, and why, is a decision made when you commission it, and it is set out in made to measure tuxedo in Lisbon.
7. Trousers are of the same cloth, with silk braid down the side seam, no turn-ups and no belt loops. Side adjusters or braces instead of a belt.
8. The jacket must fit exactly at the shoulder. A tailor can correct everything else; shoulders cannot be remade.

The shirt, the bow, and what goes under the jacket

9. The shirt is white, with a turndown collar and a soft pleated or piqué front. A wing collar belongs to white tie and on a dinner jacket looks like costume.
10. Studs on the front, cufflinks at the wrist. Mother of pearl, onyx or black enamel, nothing that glitters.
11. The bow is black, silk, in the same material as the lapel, and tied by hand. A ready-made bow on elastic is visible from across the room, while a slightly uneven knot reads as quality.
12. The trouser waistband is covered: by a waistcoat or a cummerbund. The cummerbund is worn with the pleats facing up; the story goes that a theatre ticket used to be kept in them.
13. An evening waistcoat is low and deeply cut so the shirt front shows. A business waistcoat does not belong here.
14. A necktie instead of a bow does not count, even a black one. This is the case where it is better to break the rule visibly than invisibly.

Shoes, watch and everything else

15. Shoes are black: patent oxfords, opera pumps with a bow, or simply very well polished oxfords in smooth calf. No brogues and nothing brown.
16. Socks are black, fine and long. A bare ankle when you cross your legs cancels the whole evening.
17. The pocket square is white, linen or silk, folded straight. A coloured square and a boutonnière together are one thing too many.
18. The watch is thin, on a leather strap, or there is no watch. A sports watch with a dinner jacket is the equivalent of trainers with white tie.
19. The coat over the top is dark and plain, ideally black or navy to the knee. A down jacket over a dinner jacket belongs in the cloakroom, where nobody sees it.
20. The dinner jacket goes on after six in the evening. At a daytime wedding at four it looks like a mistake of code, however well it is cut.
21. One rule in place of all of them: a dinner jacket should contain nothing you wear in daylight. If a detail is in doubt, remove it.

I cannot agree with those who call all this convention. The convention is precisely the point: an evening where everyone arrived dressed by one rule looks like a single photograph, and in that photograph you are either present or you are in a suit.

Black tie translates simply. It means a dinner jacket, and nothing but a dinner jacket.ATELIER 23

Where to buy a dinner jacket in Lisbon, and when to order

Three finished dinner jackets are at the atelier on Avenida da Liberdade: the black peak-lapel one in Vitale Barberis Canonico Super 130's, the ivory double-breasted with a shawl collar, and the midnight velvet jacket in Scabal cloth. Alterations to the figure are included and take one to two weeks. One of ours fits differently from a rented one for a single reason: this one is fitted to you, and the rented one was fitted to everybody.

A made to measure dinner jacket takes four to six weeks with one fitting, and here I am pedantic again: for the end of the year, order in October; for the wedding season, in February or March. Order at the end of November and it arrives in January, and January is the month when a dinner jacket is least needed.

Evening shirts, bows, cufflinks and cummerbunds sit at the atelier beside each jacket, so that one visit settles the whole evening. Finished suits and dinner jackets are in the catalogue.

Questions before ordering

In the atelier now: Black Tuxedo · Ivory Shawl Tuxedo · Velvet Tuxedo