Dressing for the Occasion: Your 60 Second Visual Guide

I really dig these visual guides you folks are putting together these days.

Informative and they look great.

Kudos!

Hmm, a few nits:

1. Don’t wear a long tie with a tuxedo if you wear a tuxedo to a black-tie-optional event.

2. Be careful about “semi-formal”: that traditionally means “black tie.” If the person sending the invitation is old or known to be old fashioned, it’s distinctly possible that he could be using the traditional meaning of the phrase. This is why one shouldn’t write an invitation using a phrase whose meaning is ambiguous or in transition.

“Black tie optional” is an oxymoron. Either it’s black tie or it’s not. For gentlemen, there is no in-bertween. Unfortunately, this is the sad state of our “Casual dress Friday” society.

@Martin, you’re version of casual is more, “chopping wood in the yard”.

Well saying black tie optional could also be done in consideration for those who might not own/be able to afford a tuxedo. Most every man should at least be able to have some nice dark suit.

In all of these, with maybe the exception of the tuxedo. A pair of high polish boots, like a pair of Luchesse boots, work just as well as a pair of dress shoes. I have a pair of Luchesse’s and a pair of elephant skin boots that go great with a suit.

I wish these images were available for sale on art of manliness! They would look cool in an 8×10 and framed in my classy man cave! Please make it happen!

So is a denim tux formal or semi-formal, and should you wear a black tie?

Thank you Thank you Thank you
It has taken me 7 years to teach my partner that clothes make the man. Just remember you can use the clothes the make a hell of a impression. Dont forget Bow Ties and Flashy SOCKS.

Is is me or does the ‘black tie optional’ guy look like a villain from a James Bond movie.

In my experience, Semi-Formal is more in line with what this lists as Business Casual, if not less. Semi-Formal is khakis and a button up shirt, with optional tie.

So where would “Cocktail Attire” fall in this illustration?

Great! I love the 60 second visual guide.

I’m 58 yrs old, but the way I’ve always understood it, from a friend with a lifetime in the tuxedo business, is that formal or black tie, means tuxedo with tails, only worn after 6:00 pm. Semi-formal is a tuxedo dinner jacket. Business, or street wear is a suit with tie, and then you have business casual, or casual.

“Black Tie Optional” means wear black tie, unless you don’t own it, in which case wear a conservative suit. Long ties with tuxedos are best left to Hollywood.

Additionally, describing the dress code which I would call “Lounge Suit” as “Semi-Formal” is needlessly confusing. Strictly, semi-formal refers to black tie (or its daytime equivalent, the near-extinct cutaway, or the equivalent military uniform) as distinguished from “Formal” (which is white tie [i.e. evening tailcoat, etc] or its daytime equivalent [the morning suit], or equivalent military uniforms).

The best guide for formalwear I have ever seen, by the way, is blacktieguide.com. AoM ought to collaborate with it to clear up formalwear myths. The world would be that little bit better if people wore real bow ties, peak or shaw lapels on a well-made tuxedo, shirts with studs (and not 1970s-style excessive ruffles), and wore a cummerbund or low-cut dark waistcoat instead of the awful waistcoats most people currently wear.

This was very helpful. I wonder if the guide still pertains to those of us who aren’t fortunate to have a “perfect” build, though. I look horrible in suits – kind of a cross between an angry professor and a gorilla. I used to weigh 430 pounds, and I’ve lost more than 200 pounds over the past 4 years, without surgery. However, I haven’t been able to afford “body sculpting”, so I have some very unique body dynamics. This guide would have been difficult for me when I weighed 430 pounds too. Any suggestions for those of us who can’t wear formal well?

If you take the business casual guy above and replace the “khaki’s or nice trousers” with a decent pair of jeans, is that acceptable? I do it often and believe it looks alright. No one ever says anything negative about it. In fact, i get compliments for always being “neat”. But I’ve never had an official calling on it.

Further to my previous comment: What is “business attire” in downtown Manhattan or Boston is not “business attire” in the mid-west of the United States. What is “semi formal” in Washington is not semi formal in Florida. All of this stuff is culturally dependent.

These days semi-formal means exactly what the illustration depicts. I’m not a fan of GQ, but their answer on the matter sums it up well:

“White tie vs. black tie
My fiancée and I were discussing our wedding and got into a dispute. She said that black-tie events are semiformal and white-tie events are formal. I could see how white-tie events are more formal than black-tie events, but I disagreed that black-tie events are semiformal. Could you clear this up?
In our gloriously dressed past, the lives of many men included a variety of events to which black tie and white tie were worn. Through most of the past century, formal did indeed refer to white tie and tails, and semiformal did indeed refer to dinner clothes, tuxedos, and other forms of black tie. Now, alas and totally alack, formal is generally taken to mean tux, and semiformal is taken to mean dark suit and (hopefully) tie. So you are both right, in a sense, although your fiancée is correct in the best of all possible worlds.”

If you show up to a semi-formal affair in a tux you will look hopelessly outdated and pretentious. Which is exactly what blacktieguide.com is: hopelessly outdated. Sure, if would be nice if we all still walked around in tuxes and top hats, but definitions change, and a gentleman adapts. Being a gentleman has always meant showing respect to the people hosting an event, by following the etiquette expected of them. But holding onto to outdated definitions, you show disrespect for the event, as you look out of place and become a distraction.

Also, the morning coat is anything but extinct outside of the U.S.

“what they’d like the guests to where.”

Before anybody call me on it, I meant to write “what they’d like the guests to wear”.

Another way of stating “black-tie optional” could be “black-tie encouraged”, a way of saying “it’s okay if all you have is a dark suit but if you’ve got a tux please wear it”.

I always thought “black tie optional” was a nice way of saying “wear a black tie”.

“What about people in tropical/hot environments?”
Wear a white dinner jacket. Or a linen suit. Remove your panama hat or pith helmet indoors.

More seriously, I think you one can use common sense, and sometimes there is local clothing, like the guayabera in Latin America, that is appropriate for some occasions.

But there could be times and places there in which the guide’s advice still applies. On those occasions wear natural fabrics. Wear weaves and lighter fabrics like linen or cotton. If it’s the daytime possibly wear lighter colors. Wear the correct size collar for your shirt. When in doubt, ask the host what he or she expects you to wear.

(Businessmen and politicians in these countries often wear Western business dress. Imagine how it was 100 years ago when Western men dressed much more formally day-to-day, even in the tropics. Just look at old pictures of Latin America, Hawaii or Florida, or colonial Asia and Africa).

I think for the majority of the readership, for about 90% of the time, the guide’s advice is useful. I don’t think Brett & Kate are supposed to think of every contingency when they post these things.

Haha, who ever wears a shirt under a sweater, for example?
You have seen way to many American College films, where teenagers can not properly dress casual.

You forgot to include a hat with each!

I would like to see the white tie affair make a come back. It’s more formal than black tie. Classy.

Some would say that “semi-formal” means Tux and “formal” means white tie (with tailcoat and all).