Men Only January 1958: Do's and Don'ts for Evenings Out, Ads & Quote

Do's and Don'ts for Evenings Out

By Humphrey Savile

The three phases of a social evening may be described as (1) introductory, (2) initiatory, and (3) ritualistic.  In all three of them your clothes are of the greatest importance.

Phase (1) finds you in a doorway of a room full of unfamiliar faces whose owners' decision as to your acceptability for phase (2) must rest entirely on your appearance.  If they accept you, and you pass on to phase (3), your clothes will have to stand up to the rigours of whatever rite the company has assembled to perform or observe.  It may in every probability be to more complicated a social procedure than a formal banquet with speeches, but anyone who has sat through one of these at their worst will attest to the value of good clothes.

One of the most important things to be ascertained about an evening invitation is whether you are to dress or not, and this is not always apparent from anything written on the card.  I have painful memories, for instance, of going to a strictly lounge-suit party dressed in a dinner jacket.  The invitation had in this case said "informal dress" which, to my pre-war mind meant dinner jackets, and a painful evening in which people ordered drinks off me or handed me their hats, while under the impression that I was part of the catering, has put me wise to that one for all time!

When people say "informal dress" nowadays, they tend to mean very informal indeed.  The dinner suit, which was regarded in the 'twenties and late 'thirties as the uniform of the man under twenty-one or for older men on entirely "stag" occasions, has become the almost universal evening style except when Royalty is present.

When people want you to wear tails, they are nowadays inclined to state quite openly "full evening dress" on the invitation, and if it is a veterans' occasion they may add the word "miniatures" afterwards, indicating that miniatures medals and decorations are to be worn.

Whether you are young or old, unless attending a film premiére, a television show, or event organised primarily for publicity rather than social purposes, I would particularly recommend you to observe the well-known distiller's slogan - "black and white is always right."  Coloured barathea, maroon cummerbunds, contrast lapel facings, and so on are all very well in their way,  but they are better left for show people who use them as part of their "props."  The conventional tail suit is worn with a stiff shirt front and a butterfly-type collar, white waistcoat and white bow.  You can wear diamond studs, platinum studs, or plain gold ones on your shirt, but the proper tail suit is not the garment that should be tricked out with onyx, zircon, and fancy studs of any kind.  Somehow it spoils the appearance of the whole rig.

If you are of the younger generation, you will undoubtedly prefer a dinner jacket.  To you I would comment that I wear little else myself, but claim professional licence.  The journalist is out and about in the evening rather too often to make the complete change into full evening dress, but he may nevertheless recognise that there is a lot of pleasure in doing it property in tails.

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If you have been convicted of a felony you cannot run a public house

but there is no legal bar to your becoming the headmaster of a private school.

                                                                           Michael Stewart, M.P.