Casual attire is more formal than the Twenty-first Century might lead you to believe. People regularly go out in public in workout clothes and pajamas, much to the chagrin of fashion police everywhere; but, real casual attire is what you might wear to work at an office or fancy shop if you don't wear a suit. Polo shirts and khakis are at the low end, dress slacks and sport coats are at the top end. Denim, tweed, and corduroy are all casual. Also, details of utilitarian construction like rivets and external pockets with flaps make clothes look casual.
Business attire is basically a suit: matching pieces with tailored construction. And here's where there's some real overlap, because you might wear dress slacks and a sport coat at a "smart casual" event like a party or to work. But on days when you give a presentation to the board, you'll probably wear a suit, right?
Under what circumstances should either of these be worn by a conductor? An outreach concert at a school, perhaps. Or an outdoor matinee. But these options are rarely appropriate.
Cocktail is the one level of formality most easily measured by women's attire rather than men's, because there is such a thing as a cocktail dress. It is short--knee length or so--and made of a fabric that has texture, sheen, or some other sort of interest to make it formal. This is as opposed to, for example, a sundress, which is likely to be made of more casual cotton. At the lowest end of cocktail-level formality is a day-to-evening type dress, such as a sheath worn under a suit, something which might be worn to church or a work event. Slightly higher of the scale is the realm of the tea-length garden party type dress, which might also be worn to church on Christmas or Easter. The dressiest cocktail dresses, the typical cocktail dresses, could go black tie. A man would likely likely wear a suit to a cocktail party, but a dressy one might call for a tuxedo (as would a Christmas Eve service, but definitely not Easter morning).
Which brings me to the dinner jacket. Black tie is now considered super formal. Proms, weddings, and possibly New Year's Eve parties are the main places for the wearing of a tuxedo, which was originally just typical evening wear--to dress for dinner, you wear a dinner jacket. Black tie, white pleated-front shirt, black jacket, black pants with the satin stripe down the side, black dress shoes. A vest or a cummerbund. Alternate colors are okay nowadays--it started with white, then grey, and now high school boys rent ill-fitting polyester crap to match their dates' dresses--but it's still referred to as "black tie" because that's the level of formality, not necessarily the color of the tie, ya know? Black tie should not be worn before 6 p.m. (for that, you can be guided by the women's label of "tea length," meaning not a full-length gown appropriate for the evening, but a shorter dress for the afternoon). It's a dinner jacket, you see. You wear it for dinner. For women, black tie is very flexible. At the Oscars, a few women wear cocktail dresses, but most wear floor-length gowns. A gown can be black tie, particularly if it is unconstructed, like a slip dress, but a full-skirted, constructed-bodice ball gown really should be reserved for white tie.
And this information is basically just to set up next week, when we'll be puttin' on my white tie, brushing off my tails.
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