It’s a dressy world. And it just got dressier. You used to be able to rent or buy a tuxedo and rest easy in the knowledge that you were prepared for any formal business or social event. Not any more. A tux that hasn’t been fashionably tweaked is like a suit from the 1970s: a back-lot costume redolent of mothballs and better times. For example, at this week’s Venice Film Festival opener, Burn After Reading, its star George Clooney wisely chucked the dour black-on-black Armani tuxedo that he claimed in 2006 to have worn for 10 years in favour of a classic narrow-lapel single-breasted model paired with a crisp white shirt and proper bow tie. Co-star Brad Pitt opted for a double-breasted peak-lapel tux with a natty white pocket square. The Coen brothers, who directed the spy comedy, posed on the red carpet in formal black attire sans ties for a more artsy look.
It continued what had begun earlier this summer at the Cannes Film Festival, where American Vogue editor-at-large André Leon Talley appeared in a double-breasted tux with a straight tie and glittery buckles on his patent-leather shoes, Sean “P Diddy” Combs sported black pants with a white dinner jacket and a black pocket handkerchief, and fashion designers Stefano Dolce and Domenico Gabbana drew inspiration from the 1960s with rail-thin ties and slim lapels to create the “skinny tux”.
“The main trend in this area,” says Bernard Thomas, general merchandising manager of men’s wear at Lane Crawford in Hong Kong, “would be the reworking of eveningwear, jackets specifically, by using unpredictable fabrics and details, such as military, casual or outwear fabrics.”
Case in point: David Beckham, who wore a retro wonder of a tux with wide shawl lapels to the Costume Institute Ball at the Metropolitan Museum of Art last May. The gents in Savile Row call such a style “the band-leader model” because its eye-catching feature was once popular with Tommy Dorsey and other big band leaders of the 1940s.
Even Carson Kressley, the sneaker-clad mouthy character from the US reality TV show Queer Eye For The Straight Guy, has been well-turned out of late, most recently at a New Yorkers for Children charity gala event, where he appeared to be channeling Fred Astaire. As for why? Well, Pamela Danziger, a consumer insight specialist at Unity Marketing in Stevens, Pennsylvania, sees a dressier world being the paradoxical result of a dress-down culture. “In the US,” she says, “as people continue to sink to lower and lower levels of casualness, dressing up has become a point of real distinction, a way to stand out among the crowd.” According to a Unit Marketing study, in 2007 about 10 per cent of US luxury consumers bought men’s formal eveningwear – up from 7 per cent in 2006. Women’s formal and evening wear rose even higher – from 17 per cent in 2006 to 22 per cent. And although not dramatic, the up-ticks are significant given the sluggish US economy.
However, Danziger believes globalisation is also driving the trend. “What you see in Europe are people who are more comfortable wearing formal wear. It might be that our growing attention here to formal wear is being influenced by international travel.”
“In Asia,” says Mimma Viglezio, executive vice president at Gucci Group, “women show up in gowns even if the event doesn’t say black tie. In Hong Kong, and even now in Beijing and Shanghai, as soon as they have the opportunity to dress up, they do. In Japan, a conventional woman will show up in a kimono and she will look amazing.” And, as the women, so too the men.
The effects have been felt as far afield as Los Angeles, the city where a graphic T-shirt and pressed jeans used to pass for formal. At Victoria Beckham’s birthday bash at Via Vineto in Santa Monica, for example, hubby David and guests Tom Cruise, Usher, and Diddy all wore three-piece suits complete with cuff-links, handkerchiefs, waistcoats with gold chains, and neatly combed hair.
As for San Francisco: “Evening wear has been really strong here,” says Wilkes Bashford, of the city’s eponymous men’s and women’s store. “Not only in the standard tux, but in alternative evening wear: velvet jackets, pattern jackets in paisleys and silks. A lot of people buy black-tie for the opening of the opera and the symphony, and there’s a multitude of fundraisers. That’s been great for promoting clothes for special occasions.”
As has, paradoxically, the economic climate. “During times of recession,” says Stephen Lachter, a bespoke shirt-maker at 16 Savile Row, “especially at work, people tend to dress more formally: there’s more of a sense of trying to impress.”
Richard Torregrossa is the author of ‘Cary Grant: A Celebration of Style’
