Help me, grown-ups.
Against all my wishes, I have to go to a posh awards thing for work in a few weeks. Dodging it is not an option - it's my usual approach to such occasions but won't work this time.
Dress code is 'black tie'. I don't even own a suit. What the hell do I do?
Would hiring something make me look as though I've clearly hired something? I do have nice clothes, and I'm tall and slim (not to mention rakishly handsome) but own nothing that could be construed as black tie-ish.
It's in London, so don't want to wear my kilt (which would otherwise work) as I'd eventually punch someone.
What's the deal with shoes? Do they have to be horrendous black shiny formal things? I have nothing like that.
So far out of my comfort zone!
Tell me what to do, STW.
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just stagger into Moss Bros. But down the bottle of buckie, and ask them to make you look spiffing.
At the event, the lights will be low, 50% of all the black ties in the room will be clip on. Dont worry if you look like you've been sprayed in black polyester and havent got a clue what a fish knife is.
Turn up wearing Speedos, black ones obvs, and a rotating, flashing bow tie
Last one I went to, I hired one. Aside from the shirt being marquee surplus it looked fine. Everyone else did the same. Find the cheapest, then get the next offering up.
Kilt. Every time.
Be the best dressed person there.
Just go easy on the punching...
don't want to wear my kilt as I'd eventually punch someone.
Racist stereotyping.
😉
Consider yourself lucky you don't have to find a dress?
Rachel
It's for work, hire and put it on expenses, or don't go.
Charity shop. I did hear from someone a lot posher than me that a slightly worn suit is much classier than a new one as it looks like its been in the family a while.
Relax. There's no ambiguity involved. They've made it easy - you just have to follow the rules...
❓
Consider yourself lucky you don't have to find a dress?
He's got that but doesn't want to wear it.
It'll be worth going to see all the ladies in nice dresses!
Hiring one will likely cost the same as a purchase of a cheap one from Matalan or TK maxx!
Investigate local wedding hire places as they will likely be cheaper than one of those national chains like moss bros.
Unlikely you can claim it back, it's not how it works in practice
You can wear normal black shoes, they don't need to be special shiny ones. You could have got away with a black suit but seeing as you don't have one just hire everything
It'll probably cost about £60-£70 all in at a guess. Last time this happened I just bought a black suit as I figured I would get a fair bit of use out of it. (I already have nice white shirts and a bow tie etc)
Try Matalan... I friend got a tux from there and he said it was cheaper than hiring... About 50 quid if memory serves me correctly. Didn't look too bad either, certainly as good as what you'd hire.
Spend the same again on dress shirt and a proper bow tie and you'll be "tooled up" next time you get a black tie invite.
Even a decent dress suit is relatively cheap compared to a lounge suit - they're generally not as well structured and don't have to be as robust as they're generally only for occasional wear. I have a Jaeger which was probably about half as much as one of their lounge suits.
Nickjb's advice might have been relevant in the 1950s but not nowadays, wear new, wear it well and look as sharp as possible! 🙂
Don't hire one. You'll feel like a clown. Buy something nice you'll feel good in. If you're dreading it anyway, make it easy on yourself. You won't pull any of those girls in nice dresses in a hired whistle 🙂
seriously, how often do you really look at a man's shoes?
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If this is the only one you think you will be going to in the next few years just hire one.
I bought a cheapo £80 one from M&S a few years ago as had a few coming up and so many guys at these dinners were wearing the same one.
If its for work and you are hiring one then definitely expense it, you wouldn't have to spend this money if you weren't being forced to go so you shouldn't be out of pocket.
Plain black shoes, but make sure you break them in beforehand as you don't want blisters on the night.
I bought a cheapo £80 one from M&S a few years ago as had a few coming up and so many guys at these dinners were wearing the same one.
OMG! You mean black ones, with satin strips down the leg?? How embarrassing!
Rental Black Tie tends to be ok, you'll have to buy a shirt and possible a bow tie. I have my own from Marks and Spencer which is good enough. East to dress up or down with choice of bow tie (I cheat and generally wear a coloured bow tie and not a black one) Black tie dinners can be strange, either smart and quite formal or close to St Trinians level food fights and everything in between.
any mates or relatives of a similar build?
I bought one in slaters as it was about the same as hiring one.
+1 for charity shops.
I have an M&S boil washable dinner jacket and trousers, cost about £150. Feel like a complete turnip in it.
£10 Charity shop tux? Saville row what? Feel like a megastar.
a coloured bow tie
I will kill you. To death.
Wear your kilt and be proud of your heritage.
Give the shoes a bit of a polish as well. They don't need to be like mirrors, but having nicely polished shoes with something as formal as black tie is a good thing.
Also, please try to avoid a wing collar. There's really need for it in this day and age, so go for a decent fitting Marcella dress shirt and a proper silk bow tie (no clip ons) with your DJ and you'll be fine.
Or just make all the right noises then phone in sick that morning with something non-specific and contagious.
a [i]paisley[/i] coloured bow tie
FTFY. 😈
I'd the same predicament before Christmas. I ended up buying a "worn once for a wedding" M&S dinner suit from Ebay and a shirt & bow tie from Matalan for the price of hiring one.
£10 Charity shop tux? Saville row what? Feel like a megastar.
Charity shop contents will vary wildly depending on area. Maybe you've find a Saville Row tux in a charity shop in High Wycombe, not so likely in Burnley.
Got mine from Matalan - they do slim fitting ones, and it's good enough and I'd say better than a hire one I had a few years ago. Certainly fits a damn site better. Certainly doesn't look out of place in a room full of the things.
Same with shirt and shoes.
a slightly worn suit is much classier than a new one as it looks like its been in the family a while.
"Been in the family a while" how is that classy?
it's not Downton in the 1920's, it's a work function in 2017.
Buy something that fits and feels right. You will feel loads better than wearing Lord Grantham's great grandfathers hand-me-downs.
.Wear your kilt and be proud of your [b]fictitious[/b] heritage [b]that was invented by the Victorians[/b]
😉
Slip your local funeral director £20 and see if he can find anything lying around?
Good pointRelax. There's no ambiguity involved. They've made it easy - you just have to follow the rules...
Much as I would like to talk about cut and how crap hire shops jobs are, how bad it'll make you look and what a fool you are for considering it...I can't.
My experience of these events is that everyone is drunk, the lights are low and no-one pays any attention. There are perhaps only 2 points in the evening that anyone looks at your suit, right at the start when/if there are photo's and at the end in the bar. The first one is safe as people are more interested in the ladies dresses, the second is fine as everyone is hammered. The fact that you're tall and slim means you'll look better than the majority with their guys and overly long trousers anyway.
So, in conclusion, either hire something from Moss Bros or buy from somewhere cheap. As long as it's not too badly cut and not too jazzy/shiny you'll be fine. And shoes, as long as they are black, clean and have received a polish recently will be fine.
If you formal kilt attire - wear it. You will be the smartest man in the room and will be able to claim damages for harassment from all the woman trying to check....
The rest depends - a cheap dinner suit is pretty ghastly. No harm in renting as long as its from a reliable name.
People like TM Lewin do dinner suits for <£300 so depends how often you will use them.
Patent leather shoes are no longer de-rigeur. Wing collars are/should be for white tie - so stick to standard collared dress shirt. And learn how to tie a bow tie!!
Enjoy it.
Hire the suit
learn to tie a Bow Tie (it's actually very easy). Your hire suit will look like most others, but the opportunity to casually undo your toe tie towards the end of the evening will sharpen your 'cred' 😉
Don't do what I did: when I worked in Paris in the mid 80s I was given a ticket to a posh industry dinner at the Lido in the Champs Élysées by somebody whose Dad was quite important in our industry. The chap who gave it to me told me he also had a classic St Laurent dinner suit I could borrow, so no need to hire. The suit turned out to be a 1960s job, double-breasted with massive lapels and brass sailor buttons and a waist for a very fat man. We bodged it up by folding the waistline behind me and pinning it, in the knowledge that the dinner and show would be in gloomy light and nobody would notice.
I turned up too early and the chairman of the local trade association who was hosting my table looked down his nose at me with undisguised disdain, said "And who are you?" then hastily rearranged the place labels so that I would be at the back, not the front of the table. I sat and waited like a spare at a wedding as the place slowly filled up with the creme de la creme of the French industry mafia, all impeccably dressed and suave in superb DJs, the women in designer frocks, air kissing each other and the men doing Alpha male handshakes. I found myself sitting next to the snooty patrician chairman of Givenchy perfumes and opposite a highly cultured lady who was PDG of the biggest perfume distribution company in France.
The dinner was excellent and the show fantastic. At some point during the evening I noticed that my companions' champagne glasses were empty so I reached for another bottle of Moet and unscrewed the wire. The champagne was extra lively and without warning the cork shot out with a loud pop, bouncing off a metal theatre lamp above my head with a loud clang, sending a shower of dust down and landing on the adjacent table, causing all the skinny model women to jump and gasp loudly. The champagne was bursting out of the bottle so in desperation I placed the palm of my hand over it, which caused champagne to spray sideways soaking me and my snooty neighbours who all stared at me like the pure idiot I was, while making a show of mopping themselves off. A waiter hurried over and took charge and as soon as the show finished I got up and left before the lights came on. Happily the safety pin in my waistband didn't give up; that would have been the final embarrassment.
That's why you need to hire a decent suit.
Bought an ex-hire Morning Suit from from [url= http://www.lipmanandsons.co.uk/findus.htm ]Lipmans[/url] on Charing Cross Road years ago which is still doing well now (the suit that is) and definitely looks better than the hire ones usually seen at weddings.
They'll do the same for Black Tie I expect so if you're staying near that area might be worth popping in?
Kilt.
Its what its for.
Take note of black tie requirements which from memory require a jacket and waist coat. No belt
Best dressed man is...
I thought this was going to be a review of another crap Bowie album.
Depends [i]how often you go to these events[/i] vs.[i] how long the suit is likely to fit.[/i]
Forget the kilt, just hire a sharp suit. Smart, clean, non-tatty black shoes are fine.
Check nobody else is wearing a kilt... Formal do's only need one **** in a kilt, in the same way that villages generally only need one idiot. 😉
Such a lot of angst for a simple fix.
Hire one. Don't trash it. Take it back.
Clip on tie, dress shirt, polished black shoes.
You are making it too complicated.
You will be the smartest man in the room
No you won't, but y'know? Go for it anyway, everyone could probably do with a laugh to lighten the mood. There's invariably always one who thinks that by wearing a plaid skirt it somehow marks him out as "an individual".
How long have you got until the event?
I can also definitely vouch for the charity shop searching, if you can find something that fits well. (Google how a well-fitted suit should fit, if you don't already know - I didn't know stuff like how much shirt cuff should be on show, how the jacket should sit on the shoulders and waist, that sort of thing) But it may take a while, and a few charity shops.
The good thing is that black tie is black, so a jacket from one shop should more or less match a pair of trousers from another shop, if they're both black enough! (and the lighting will probably be lower than daylight so you should be able to get away with it)
Learn how to tie a bow tie (YouTube). It is WAY classier than a clip-on one, and it looks cooler when you un-tie it and leave it hanging round your neck later on in the evening.
Get a decent shirt, whether from a charity shop or one that you pay for - no one will blame you for not wearing one of those god-awful frilly jobs that normally accompanies a dress suit, you can get away with a good plain white shirt.
Any leather black shoes will do, but polish them (although I've worn Doc Martens a couple of times). Make sure your trousers are the right length to reach them properly!
HTH
and it looks cooler when you un-tie it and leave it hanging round your neck later on in the evening.
No it doesn't.
Mish Moneypenny thinks it does.
Don't do what I did: when I worked in Paris in the mid 80s
That's brilliant, you should send that in to Radio 2's Confessions slot.
Last posh black tie do I went to all the ex-public schoolboys (or similarly privaledged) we're wearing worn out dinner jackets, possibly inherited from their fathers! Turn up in something new and they'll have your number in an instant. 🙂
It does. FACT. It's the only reason to bother with one of the clever ones!
Seriously though, I've never been to a black tie event where people care what the men wear. Some people do look good, but there are plenty of fat middle aged men that are looking bad. Everyone pays attention to what the women wear. You just need to be able to blend in with the sea of black tie outfits. Get something normal, if you stand out you are basically a ****!
Current trend is to wear a clip on tie (no wing collar else you'll show the clip) then surreptitiously swap it for a proper tie casually draped for the louch effect once you've eaten,
Seriously though, I've never been to a black tie event where people care what the men wear
The only time men care what other men are wearing at a black tie do is when they've all been in the same position: "jesus christ, I've never been to a black tie dinner before, what do I do?" and are now checking out to see how their colleagues fared with the same crisis.
Are you being paid to go? If not don't go simple as that. Work should also be paying for the uniform they want you to wear.
There's invariably always one who thinks that by wearing a plaid skirt it somehow marks him out as being scottish
Not individual just a * in a skirt not bothered enough to give a shit what the * in the suit thinks.
Lets shake it up though.
Tartan trews.
Learn how to tie a bow tie
It's the same knot as you do every day for your shoe laces, I don't understand why people struggle with it.
Dont worry if you .....havent got a clue what a fish knife is.
I think you've got the wrong end of the stick here. Only new money Johnny come latelies use fish knives.
Proper smart people use dinner sets handed down through the family since long before fish knives were invented.
HTH
[url= http://www.matalan.co.uk/mens/collections/suits-and-workwear/suits/tuxedos ]£65 if you can find a decent fit, you will never have to worry about it ever again,,,It will be dark wont it .[/url]
Wear your kilt and be proud of your fictitious heritage that was invented by the Victorians
Hey nettles, don't be a spoilsport. 😉
Such a lot of angst for a simple fix.
Hire one. Don't trash it. Take it back.
Clip on tie, dress shirt, polished black shoes.
You are making it too complicated.
100% this ^
If you're not a Bryan Ferry lookalike (and he's darn hot in a suit) then a kilt will see the laydeeeeeez swooning for England and Scotland. Could you cope? 😉
If you're a Scot and have the full-posh kilt get-up, wear it.
Otherwise just buy one, then next time (always a next time) you'll already have one. I probably wear mine once/twice a year, and bought it about 10 years ago when I had two dinners within a month.
Luckily I've a racing snake build which hasn't really changed since I was a teenager (now 52 y/o).
And TJ, asking to expense a DJ is like putting your hand up to go to the front of the no-promotion queue.
Kilt.
and amaze the engerlish of tales of... yes I normally were this to Tesco, its that length as that's how deep the snow is in winter, nothing is worn underneath, it all works perfectly thanks etc etc
oh and how we have to grease the harbour walls to stop the polar bears climbing up in winter
what fun I had at the wedding I went to in deepest Surrey 😉
Kilt.
Seriously - why do you even need to ask?
Is it too early to suggest tartan trews again?
As mentioned, turn down collar to avoid the usual faux pas.
Wing tips are for white tie.
Is it too early to suggest tartan trews again?
No mention of rockin' the Bay City Rollers look. 🙂
I bought one and got so drunk that I don't even recall taking it to the dry cleaners the following day. I thought I lost it and poor that down to a drinking incident
Got a call a week later from the dry cleaners informing me they couldn't get the vomit smell off it and could I kindly collect it as customers were starting to complain about the smell
Kilt - no question.
And don't wear a clip-on bow tie; they're crap (would you wear a clip-on neck tie?)
So, from a rough read through the thread it seems most want you to look like this.
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You will, rightly, be ridiculed.
Fake serious illness, mountain bike incident or ask one of your friends if they don't mind pretending to be dead. Failing that hire a suit and get totally hammered. This will ensure that you can safely not attend future events. I may have tested some of these methods myself at various points over the last twenty years.
tjagain - Member
Are you being paid to go? If not don't go simple as that. Work should also be paying for the uniform they want you to wear.
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Wore a tux once, hated every second of it, don't like the fact you don't wear a belt with one, uncomfortable and felt like a fat bloke at a James Bond convention
Belts shouldn't be seen on any suit 😉
Cummerbund, pochette, dress studs and self tie bow-tie; don't wear a wing collar shirt.
There's a complete minefield of cock-up potential waiting for you 😉
CaptainFlashheart - Member
a coloured bow tie
I will kill you. To death
That fate belongs to the one that spins around...
No, this is the look to adopt, because, as is commonly known, every girl's crazy 'bout a sharp dressed man!
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CountZero - MemberCaptainFlashheart - Member
a coloured bow tie
I will kill you. To deathThat fate belongs to the one that spins around...
No, death is justice for a coloured bow tie.
'To the pain' is the right punishment for a spinning tie
😆
Scapegoat - Member
Current trend is to wear a clip on tie (no wing collar else you'll show the clip) then surreptitiously swap it for a proper tie casually draped for the louch effect once you've eaten,
I was told that one about 15 years ago, it's not current or a trend, learnt my lesson now a proper tied one looks better in every way.
I now own about 3 one emergency one from a second hand shop in London, one posh designer one that was on sale when mine got locked in the dry cleaners as I was late out of work on the way there and another Burton one from years back. All with standard M&S trousers and nice shirt, cheap and always there when needed.
It does worry me a little that some people are unable to wear any kind of suit for any leangth of time these days.