The Contradiction of Wedding Attire

Many of those attending a wedding this summer will feel they should have some sort of summery outfit, a linen suit perhaps, or at least something sporty in pale grey. Those who turn up in their dark blue business suit will probably feel a little underdressed, aware they didn’t make an effort. Yet they are probably the most correctly attired people there.

Wedding attire has changed over time, just like men’s formal dress generally. What was once the absolute minimum is now the realistic maximum. But there are a fair number of constants, and a range of more or less formal options one can go for while still being satisfyingly traditional.

At the most formal end of the spectrum is the morning coat (a version of tails) in black or dark grey. It usually has one button at the waist and tails that fall onto the back of the knees. It is worn with mid-grey striped trousers. Above the waist is a double-breasted waistcoat in pale grey, cream or buff (creamy yellow). Shirt in white or with white contrast collar (preferably separate), most formally wing collar, with an ascot. Then accessories, white linen handkerchief, flower in the buttonhole etc.

This get-up is probably what you will get if you hire a wedding outfit. It will be poor quality, fit badly and be stain resistant. Most importantly, it will offer no opportunity for personal expression.

So, let’s take the formality down a notch. First, the shirt – this can be a smart white shirt with a normal collar. If you happen to own a contrast-collar shirt, with the body in blue or blue stripes for example, this is the perfect opportunity to wear it. If you have a wing collar shirt of your own (perhaps to go with your black tie/tuxedo) then wear that. Either way, at least the shirt is your own.

Second, dump the ascot unless you own one. The one from the rental place will be the same as every groom or wedding guest has worn and will have no personality. Instead wear your favourite tie in a summer hue – perhaps a gold satin, or a Macclesfield grey.

Third, the trousers can quite easily be your own. If you own a mid-grey pinstripe or chalk-stripe suit, wear the trousers from that. Even a sporty check is acceptable, as long as it is the right grey to contrast with the very dark jacket.

So here is a decent alternative. Rent the waistcoat and the morning coat, and wear everything else your own. They will fit better and probably be of better quality.

There are two further options. One, wear the waistcoat from another three-piece suit you own. This should really be either a tan linen, or a pale grey wool. I’m sure there aren’t many people out there who own either, but if you do then the whole get-up is yours minus the jacket.

Which is where the stroller comes in. This is semi-formal day wear, but given that everyone else will be in linen suits, it is still pretty formal. The stroller is a short jacket in dark grey or black, single or double breasted, with peaked lapels. Again, it is worn with striped or checked trousers in a contrast grey, and can have the same shirt, tie and waistcoat as mentioned.

So wear whichever of these items you already own and combine them. The outfit will be traditional, but you will be largely wearing your own, personally picked and fitted clothes. Perhaps most importantly, you will also look different to anyone else no matter how formal or informal they may be. There is nothing worse than the whole wedding party wearing the same ill-fitting, shiny outfits. It’s supposed to be a special occasion, and they’re wearing nylon.

Myself, I own all these items save the waistcoat. But then maybe I’ll have a buff one made before the next wedding I go to.

P.S. To complete the argument begun in the first paragraph – the next level down from this outfit for a wedding is considered to be a dark suit combining some of these elements, such as a double-breasted waistcoat or perhaps a double-breasted jacket. There is therefore a good chance that your friend who turns up in his dark grey, double-breasted office suit will be better dressed than every ball of wrinkled linen dotted around the church. Linen is for summer, but not for weddings.

How to Put Darts in Your Shirts

I used to have a few shirts that I really liked but which did not fit especially well around the waist. They were bought in the days when I knew a lot less about fit and cloth (hard to imagine, isn’t it?), and while the neck, shoulders and sleeve were fine, the cut was simply too full from the chest downwards.

Such were my frustrations, I may have thrown them out. So instead I decided to try and sew my own darts into them, to narrow the waist. If I messed it up, I could just throw them away anyway.

My first attempt went surprisingly well, but there were a few lessons learned. I should have tried a couple of variations on the shape and size of the darts before I sewed them in. I should have been a little less cautious on their length. And while they held up very well in the wash, I learned it was worth sewing as tight stitches as possible.

I think I’ve now got a pretty good system, and all those shirts have been darted, worn and washed several times, to pleasing effect. I could have had it done at a tailor, but not being in essence a practical person, it is very satisfying to master a skill such as this. And it probably saved me £100. Here is my step-by-step guide to putting darts in your shirts. It is not that hard, and very satisfying when completed.

1. Lay out your shirt on an ironing board. Pinch the material in two places, roughly where your waist would be and a couple of inches in from the seam on either side. Start with a fold of a couple of centimetres, folded out towards the seam. Iron that patch flat and then fold the material above and below, pulling the material away gradually so it forms a crescent.
2. Pin both folds with three pins or needles each, to keep them in place.
3. Try the shirt on, being careful that none of the pins point inwards. Assess how suppressed the waist is by pulling the sides away from your skin, and try sitting down, stretching etc.
4. If the fold needs adjusting, take it back to the ironing board and fold the material more or less. Also, if you feel the dart could or should be longer, narrowing more of the shirt’s body, then extend the crescent above and below.
5. Sew the fold in place, starting with a few stitches in one place (on the inside of the shirt so it doesn’t show) and then sew smallish stitches, in and out up the fold, and finishing in the same way.
6. Use white thread unless the shirt is one block colour – and look closely, most colours are a mix of a darker colour and white.
7. Don’t worry if the stitches seem far apart. They will hold up well – and they don’t have to be as tight as the ones that construct the shirt itself. (You could of course do this on a sewing machine as well if you have one. I don’t.)

If you find it hard to iron the crescents (I found it the trickiest part) you can always start the fold halfway down the back of the shirt and just carry it on off the bottom of the tail. This will create a flap on the bottom, but if you have your shirt tucked in most of the time, this won’t be a problem. I found this particularly useful on a Ralph Lauren blue oxford, which although “custom fit” was still far too broad. The thicker material made it hard to fold accurately.

I’m sure some of you are proficient sewers, and all this is the equivalent of teaching your grandma to suck eggs. I’m sure others are horrified at the idea of amateur tailoring. But I found it very satisfying (a step up from hemming my trousers) and I encourage you to have a go.

Odd Colour Combinations

There are a good few ways to stand out in a suit, almost as many as the chapters of a style book: cloth, cut, pattern, accessories etc. But one of the most rewarding and hardest to master is colour. It is so easy to get wrong – everyone can summon some lurid combination from his or her memory. I saw someone in a suit recently that had bulbous red chalk stripes on a grey/green ground. It was hideous.

Colour is also relatively easy to get right – blue suit, white shirt, blue tie; grey suit, pink shirt, black tie; grey suit, white shirt, almost any tie. What is genuinely difficult is a colour combination that is right but unusual. Something that stands out because it is not safe, and therefore is rarely worn; but that works.

Combining colours does not come naturally to many men. It is an artistic talent at heart, and one that few have pursued or developed. Most would ideally have a colour combination chart to refer to, but disliking such artifice, choose to re-wear the same few combinations.

I cycle to work most days, and keep a few suits and pairs of shoes in the office. So every morning I have to pack a shirt and tie, trying to picture how they will go with the suits, shoes and other accessories I have at work. It makes picking combinations even harder.

There are three combinations that I like particularly because they are different, and that I think stand out because they work. They are pink and green, purple and yellow, and blue and brown.

Pink and green works best as a shirt/tie combination: pale pink shirt, bright green tie. The tie I have is a sharp green polo tie, complete with small red insignia. I’m sure the red helps a little to harmonise with the shirt, but the pink and green themselves work wonderfully. Unusual, yes; but it works. I also have a dark green handkerchief with brown detailing that works just as well to complement an open-necked pink shirt. Red and green are of course contrasting colours, but they are too strong on their own to pair off well. With the red diluted into pink, it works.

Which segues nicely into purple and yellow, as they are also contrasting colours (for those who can’t remember art class, a primary colour’s contrasting colour is the result of mixing the other two primaries). Now purple and yellow are hard to match in a shirt and tie. I have one very pale yellow shirt that does work with a dark purple tie, but I think the two are best put together in bright but separated combinations – shirt and pocket handkerchief or socks and tie/handkerchief/shirt. Mostly I think yellow works best as the first of these pairings. Try a purple paisley handkerchief with your yellow shirt; or bright yellow socks with an otherwise sober purple tie.

My last combination is less unusual, but it is a perennial favourite. All too often I feel men reach for a drab or washed-out tie to go with their blue shirt – grey, black or a pale version of one of the colours above. Instead, try a brown tie, perhaps with a white stripe. The richness of the colour is unusual and draws the eye; the same works with a brown handkerchief (perhaps yellow/orange pattern) to an open-necked blue shirt. The same rule applies to brown shoes with a blue shirt, as is often said. The Italians like brown shoes they hardly wear anything else. Black is reserved for formal wear. Get a nice pair of chocolate Oxfords and you may find yourself doing the same.

How to Buy Luxury: Hermes

There is a saying that the most luxurious items you own will probably be those you wear least. While I can see why this may be the case (your black tie, patent shoes and dress studs are unlikely to be cheap) it is depressing.

I have always liked a little touch of luxury. But I am at heart a cheap man. So I go to every effort to eschew this rule and buy quality items that I will use frequently. The principle can apply to, for example, a work bag that you use almost every day. To your luggage. To one dark brown belt and probably one dark brown pair of leather oxfords.

If you are going to buy a luxurious suit, why not make it a mid-grey flannel one with two pairs of trousers? The jacket will always be useful to wear with odd trousers, even jeans (normal, worsted suit jackets never look right in this regard). And the flannel trousers themselves are the standard for odd, patterned jackets.

My latest discovery in this spirit is a reversible Hermes tie. Obviously, an Hermes tie is an aspirational item. But the printed variety never really appealed to me – there’s something about a grown businessman wearing flamingos on his tie that smacks of infantilism rather than elegance.

But this one, found in the Sloane Street store, is knitted silk. Most importantly, it is reversible. Twice. The two blades are of identical width, and each has one colour on either side. The brand offers various colour permutations, but the most practical – and the one I ended up buying – is black/grey/light blue/dark blue (see picture).

These are surely the four most useful solid ties a man can have. And while you can’t wear a knitted tie on more formal occasions, these are fewer and further between today. I end up wearing this tie once or twice a week, which is a lot considering that I don’t wear a tie every day.

It’s satisfying wearing something luxurious so often. As Will on asuitablewardrobe.dynend.com is fond of saying, the real value of an item is its price divided by the number of times it is worn, plus some multiplier for the pleasure it engenders in the wearer. Which makes this Hermes tie, despite being twice the price of any other tie I have ever bought, pretty good value.

(One last tip – if this sounds like a good idea then try and find the line of ties in duty free. I bought mine in Heathrow airport, and saving 17.5% softens the impact on the bank balance a little.)

The Misunderstood Pleat

Pleats are useful if you wear your trousers high, or if you are overweight. Otherwise they are useless.

Traditionally, most trousers had pleats rather than being flat fronted. Usually two on either side, and usually outward-facing (meaning that the hollow of the fold was on the side of the hips rather than the fly). The pleat closest to the fly was deeper. The English often wore their pleats inward-facing, considering the way they fell to be more elegant as less likely to gape.

But this was because they wore their trousers on the natural waist. This is easy to find: it is above your hip bones; often around the level of the belly button, though this can vary from one person to another. The waist is normally the slimmest point on a person, which is one reason men wore their trousers there, and why jackets are nipped in there – to accentuate the difference in width from shoulder to waist. It is certainly why women wore their skirts on the waist, and why many women still do so today. Their jackets are usually nipped in more obviously as well.

Now if your trousers have a high rise (the length from crotch to waistband) and are sitting on your waist, they need to go out before they go in. They need to expand from this slim point to get up and over the hip bones. Otherwise they would be skintight from the waist all the way down to the middle of the thighs. Pleats are necessary. They enable this expansion neatly and elegantly, dovetailing back into the line of the trousers when width is no longer needed after the mid-thigh point.

But you do not need them if you wear your trousers on your hips (as most do these days). This is also easy to determine – your trousers sit on the hip bone. The skin has hard hip bone underneath, not squidgy stomach. Why some men have trouble telling where their waist is I’ll never know.

Pleats worn on the hips make your thighs look like melons. They create needless volume. Combine pleats with a sharp narrowing to the ankle, and cuffs at the bottom of the trouser, and you have the abomination of so many American khakis. The pleats give volume at the top of the leg. The narrow ankle accentuates this proportion. And the cuffs make your leg two inches shorter.

It is hard to see how, without wearing pedal-pushers, a pair of trousers could be less flattering. Except that Americans have done it – they finish off the ensemble with a large pair of white trainers. So the trousers puddle at the ankle as well, their line being entirely unsuited to falling elegantly onto ankle-supporting Nikes.

Pleats, again only if worn on the waist, can be flattering for larger men. They mean that their trousers fall straight down rather than going in first, highlighting a belly.

That is the limited, albeit useful role of pleats. Ignore anyone who says they just want roomier pockets.