Off With Their Coattails
Investigating the mysterious origins of the tuxedo on its 125th—or 146th, depending on whom you talk to—anniversary. A special year in sartorial history, 2011 marks an important anniversary for the tuxedo, a revolutionary style that modernized formal wear by inspiring men to replace traditional tailcoats with more casual shortened dinner jackets. The story of how the tuxedo made its initial debut in American society dates back to the Gilded Age, when the founders of the posh Tuxedo Park resort in Orange County, N.Y., are thought to have introduced the coat at their exclusive sporting club. This fall, current residents of the Park, along with the local historical society and the distinguished Savile Row clothier Henry Poole & Co. plan to celebrate the legacy of the tuxedo in a manner befitting its eminent birth. But significant questions linger, like when and where the coat was truly born, or even why it’s called the tuxedo.
For generations, one account eclipsed all others as the creation myth of choice. This version of events credits young Griswold Lorillard, the son of Tuxedo Park developer and tobacco magnate Pierre Lorillard IV, with inventing the dinner jacket on a whim, after getting frustrated that his tails were interfering with sitting and dancing. In October 1886, at Tuxedo Park’s Autumn Ball, an annual gala honoring debutantes, Griswold and a few of his friends emerged in tailless dress coats and scarlet satin vests. Their unconventional attire was enough to turn heads, not to mention ruffle the feathers of the old guard. Town Topics, the leading society magazine of the day—and the only major publication known to have recorded the incident at that time—compared the boys to “royal footmen,” adding that they “ought to have been put in strait-jackets long ago.”
In recent decades, however, Griswold’s stunt and its relationship to the tuxedo’s development have come under increasing scrutiny. Lifelong Tuxedoite and resort historian Chris Sonne, who knows the Park’s romantic folklore better than anyone, dismisses assertions that Griswold invented the tux as “false history.” The tailless satin coat described in Town Topics, Mr. Sonne believes, was a variation on the classic British naval mess coat, a uniform Griswold and his pals observed officers wearing earlier that summer at the Cowes sailing regattas.
I love a man in a tuxedo, especially with a complimentary but fun matching bow tie and cumberbund!
I love black tie affairs because men are forced to dress up! They look so handsome in tuxedos! What I fail to understand is why there are so many tuxedo rental places when it is so much easier for a man to simply buy one basic tuxedo and wear different matching bow tie and cumberbund sets. I have a talent for choosing just the right bow tie and cumberbund match for the man! I try to lend my talents to the improvement of mankind in any way I can. 🙂
That said, I must admit, I almost NEVER see an Asian man in need of help in the wardrobe deparment. Especially, the married ones! I believe that is because Asian women are known for their impeccable taste and sense of style. Most American men need help bc they hate to shop which is masculine and normal and therefore the job of the woman.
Taco – Puttin’ on the Ritz