NOUVEAU BLACK TIE

The high/low of black tie in the age of informality

DRESS CODE

THERE ARE APPARENTLY NO MORE RULES in fashion. Why? Because rules, much like tradition, must be passed down in the written word or taught orally. Kids don’t read anything longer than a caption these days and a majority of the menswear elders are gone. Or not on Instagram Reels anyway. Nobody knows anything [if I had a dollar for every time someone was sporting a tacked jacket vent, I’d be Bernard Arnault].

When it comes to “dressing the man”…an updated Bible would need to be compiled by a new authority on menswear. Sadly, it wouldn’t be a hard bound book so much as a mediocrely executed TikTok account by a Gen-Zer who’s never laid eyes on Alan Flusser’s crucial source material (read Dressing the Man: Mastering the Art of Permanent Fashion). Anyways, I digress. Rules…

Rules look backwards…at what’s behind. Style looks forward…toward new frontiers. And yet, style, without a foundation in rules, veers into camp rather quickly. It is this sartorial alchemy that intrigues me most in menswear. In the ever increasing informalization of dress, what is the way forward for tailored clothing in fashion…much less menswear?

A couple years ago, I ran into Alan Flusser at a party on the Upper East Side. He was in black tie…black double breasted dinner jacket, white tuxedo shirt, and black velvet smoking slipper but he’d paired them with a black Adidas track pant. It blew my mind a little. Thinking Flusser had suffered a minor stroke on the back nine of his illustrious career, I leaned over to his right hand man and discreetly inquired, “How long’s this been going on?” to which he replied, “Oh, this is a thing he does now. He’s absolutely serious about it.”

For me, Flusser’s formalwear-athleisure cocktail left a little to be desired (the design of his particular track pant wasn’t the best choice in my humble opinion, and the execution was a little sloppy) but the idea excited me for a couple reasons.

One: here was the author of the menswear Ten Commandments publicly toying with the high/low of a black track pant in a formalwear ensemble.

Two: in Flusser’s old age, it was inspiring to witness that clothes, and new ideas about wearing them, still held his imagination.

That’s the power of imagination, and what dressing can be. You learn these rules and follow them until you realize that it’s time to stretch them and see what happens.

—David Coggins

But here’s the thing, informality must be earned.  For example, at most investment banks on Wall Street, analysts at the bottom typically abide by a more formal dress code than the managing directors in the corner office.  And when I’d first met my girlfriend’s father, I called him Mr. Kolmansberger until he eventually asked me to call him J.K…the nickname all his friends and family knew him by. Informality is earned.

Flusser exercised the informality that he’d earned in order to reinterpret the tuxedo just as Ralph Lauren had many years ago when [radically] introducing westernwear into his eveningwear.  Their reinterpretation of the tuxedo being a skilled, considered, and daring effort to look more like themselves…bending the black tie uniform and its rules at will.  All that to say, don’t even think about attempting such a feat until you’ve mastered the black tuxedo as prescribed and can tie a bow tie (with some personality).  More importantly, truly know yourself. I left the party that evening tucking the idea into my back pocket for the next black tie occasion.

When I took in the opera Champion at the Met last year, I found it to be the perfect “formalwear-optional” occasion to play my hand at the high/low ensemble.  What I attempted to great effect was this: double breasted cream jacket over a blue Oxford cloth tuxedo shirt.  Then, the pièce de résistance that truly makes the track pant work—a black cummerbund, cleverly concealing the elastic waistband—polished off with an F.E. Castleberry evening opera pump.

Formalwear. Streetwear. Westernwear. Athleisure. Tailored clothing. It’s everything everywhere all at once. It’s this mix that sustains my curiosity in fashion…and in menswear, more importantly. This is our present and our future. This is nouveau black tie.