This is complete guide to modern black tie tailoring and what to wear with it, highlights the archetypes of black tie, including the dinner suit, the bow tie and black tie accessories. You’ll be able to distinguish what type of lapel and facing to use in you dinner jacket, and various options to style it including shirting and cummerbunds.
The Dinner Suit
Single-Breasted Peak Lapel
The original dinner jacket. The single-breasted peak lapel is an elegant option to go for. The key thing to remember is that because this is the most classic, you need to keep the styling minimal. This means silk satin or grosgrain facings, a single-button closure, straight jetted pockets, and no buttonhole on the lapel. The traditional version of the dinner jacket has no vents, but you can choose side vents or a single centre vent, if desired. It should feature four buttons on the sleeve cuff, covered with the same fabric that matches your lapels.
Single-Breasted Shawl Lapel
Introduced later than the single-breasted peak, the single-breasted shawl is still an extremely classic look. It has the benefit of having a collar that you don’t find daytime suits, indicating that it’s clearly evening wear. It is softer and subtler than the peak lapel, with an elegant line highlighting it’s shape against the chest. If you have an athletic build, the shawl collar will offer a little more overall balance. Just like peak lapels, the shawl variety can be of varying widths and have more or less belly. Some shawl collars will also be rounder or straighter at the bottom, according to your fancy.
Double-Breasted Peak Lapel
Double-breasted jackets are less formal than their single-breasted counterparts, as a result of the asymmetry created by the overlapping fabric and the additional buttons of the jacket’s front. Jackets that are this classic are optimal for everyone, bear in mind that the additional buttons and layer of fabric at the front are less effective at slimming. Another factor to consider is that wider lapels are more harmonious on a double-breasted jacket.
Double-Breasted Shawl Lapel
This is the softest of the classic dinner jacket silhouettes. Double-breasted shawl lapels jackets are loaded with nonchalance. It works best if the lapels are decently bellied, to continue the theme of overall softness.
Lapel Facings
Technically, ‘facing’ refers to the fabric that covers your lapel. It’s generally a different one to that of the body of your jacket, with the purpose of elevating black tie above the everyday lounge suit. Their typically reflective surface can also highlight the face in variable light.
Silk Satin Facings
The most common facing is silk satin; it is luxurious, smooth, and gives off a lovely sheen. It’s also the most understated and the least risky choice, dating back to the earliest dinner suits. Facings are usually in a colour approximating that of your jacket, but black always goes well with dark coloured numbers—with anything, in fact, but a shade of white.
Grosgrain Facings
While not the first facing to grace black tie outfits, grosgrain has become the most traditional. A ribbed silk with a subtle matte finish, it became widely used precisely because it doesn’t stand out. It’s also more durable than silk satin and snags less easily, which makes it a good option if you plan to have only one black tie suit that’ll last for the next few decades.
A finer grosgrain works with a shawl lapel because the angularity of the ribbed texture is less obvious and doesn’t clash with the soft curves, while a stronger, wider grosgrain works better with a peak lapel, drawing as it does a little more attention to itself.
Self-Facings
‘Self-facing’ refers to lapel facing that is made of the same material as the body of the jacket. It makes an outfit less obviously black tie, and therefore appropriate to wear elsewhere without a bow tie. Self-facings work particularly well for jackets made of velvet and other creative fabrics.
Quilted Facings
Quilted facings can be found on on smoking jackets to add texture and convey comfort. A little old-fashioned, but old-fashioned things that have stood the test of time, have done so for a reason.
Black Tie Trousers
Classic Trousers
Black tie trousers should be made of the same cloth as used in the dinner jacket. Cut high on the waist, flat-fronted for a minimal look, or pleated for a more traditional one. It should be generous in the leg to provide a clean, crisp line all the way down to the shoe.
A classic trouser must have straight—not slanted—pockets, no back pockets, integrate internal buttons for braces (if you intend to wear them), have a silk braid on the outside seam, and ensure a clean hem to accentuate the sense of verticality.
Alternative Black Tie Trousers
While you don’t enjoy quite the array of options here as you do with alternative jackets, it’s still possible to cut a dash in the manner that pleases you. We’d advise readers to generally steer clear of lighter coloured trousers; they swing a little wide of the dress code, and don’t tend to go with the darker dinner jacket you’d need to pair them with to create contrast, making you look top-heavy and breaching the up-and-down seamlessness of black tie.
Tartan Trousers
Tartan trousers paired with a velvet jacket can make for a lovely, textured, considered modern black tie look. The texture of the tartan complementing that of the velvet.
Check Trousers
Check trousers look great with a white or off-white dinner jacket. Add a touch of formality by wrapping a cummerbund around your middle that picks up one of the colours in the check. Such trousers are a little lighter than tartans, so can be worn in more summery situations.
Velvet Trousers
A statement trouser with a touch of ’70s glamour, velveteen trousers work best with a matching velvet jacket, or a plush gown for a frowsty sort of style. The matching textures of top and bottom give you vertical continuation and harmony, even if they come in different colours.
White Trousers
White trousers should be worn in summer only, with a contrasting jacket. Though definitely not traditional, there have been enough Hollywood Golden-Age clotheshorses who donned such looks in retirement on the Riviera to lend the outfit precedent.
Black Tie Shirting
A purpose-made shirt is an essential part of black tie and an important marker that you know what you’re doing. An evening shirt must be obviously distinct from a shirt you might wear for day-to-day business or daytime pleasure.
White Marcella Front Shirt
Sometimes called a piqué shirt front, the marcella is one of the two traditional choices. The body of the shirt is usually a soft, breathable poplin, with the collar, cuffs, and shirt front made of marcella cotton. The shirt front can be starched to give it more stiffness, which will last all evening and create an incredibly clean look. A marcella front shirt is set off best with shirt studs, as opposed to buttons.
White Pleated Front Shirt
The second of the traditional options, the pleated front elevates your appearance above daywear. The body is usually made of poplin, with the shirt front being made of a pleated fabric.
A pleated-front shirt is a sophisticated option for black tie today, adding a touch of texture, interest and formality. It goes very well with either studs or mother-of-pearl buttons.
Concealed Buttons Shirt
For a sleeker, more modern option, here, the placket of the shirt conceals the buttons completely, giving a minimalist look. Simple, understated, and devoid of the frippery inherent in its marcella- or pleat-fronted cousins, it conveys gravitas to the shirt not by means of decoration but through its absence.
Black Tie Accessories
Cummerbund
Shirt Studs
Charity g
Cufflinks
Shirt studs often come as a set, along with matching cufflinks. We think it’s generally best to wear the set; don’t mix and match, for your outfit may start to have too much going on, to the point that you give the impression that you’ve dressed for a costume party. It will also betray a lack of mastery of the codes of black tie.
Cufflinks can be attached to cuffs via a number of systems. A T-bar toggle is the most popular, functional, and easy to put on. Whale toggles are an elegant variation of the T-bar toggle. The ‘shank’ of this cufflink is gently rounded to follow the natural curvature of your wrist.
Modern Black Tie: A Guide
Modern Black Tie is the most extensive guide to contemporary black-tie evening wear that has ever been published.
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If you need more guidance on the finer details of Black Tie and everything that surrounds it, our book Modern Black Tie is a must-read! You can get yourself a copy here.