Are notch lapel dinner jackets "correct"?

[Feraud]

In the discussion of what is period correct, acceptable, worn most frequently, etc. we have to be careful to not let personal likes and dislikes creep into the discussion. History (and Hollywood) have a funny way of handing down certain perceptions.

Just the facts, sir.

 

[avedwards]

I know the shawl collar is supposed to be the correct choice. However, it always felt a little to Hugh Heffner, for me.

I see your point, but if we followed this logic we could avoid lots of clothing because of other people who wear it. Inspector Gadget wears a fedora and trench coat but that certainly won't stop me wearing them. I think a shawl collar is very classy as it is certainly the most unusual lapel type.

 

[Yeps]

In the discussion of what is period correct, acceptable, worn most frequently, etc. we have to be careful to not let personal likes and dislikes creep into the discussion. History (and Hollywood) have a funny way of handing down certain perceptions.

Just the facts, sir.

Doing just the opposite and saying personal opinion... while I do not deem anything to be wrong with the notch lapel, I think the peak is generally more flattering, as it accentuates the shoulders and minimizes the waist, creating an illusion of an athletic build, or showing off one where it actually is.

 

[Guttersnipe]

In the discussion of what is period correct, acceptable, worn most frequently, etc. we have to be careful to not let personal likes and dislikes creep into the discussion. History (and Hollywood) have a funny way of handing down certain perceptions.

Just the facts, sir.

This is a tenant I learned from my background as a history major and reenactor, and it is so true!

 

[Charlie Huang]

Here's a question you might well know the answer to..... re shirts. It seems to me that daywear follows the same rule as per evening, i.e. if the shirt has a wing collar and is intended to be worn with the morning coat, the cuffs should be a single layer; if a full, turnover collar, they should be doubled. (It seems that a turndown collar is acceptable with morning coat, whereas it would traditionally be considered a bit of a faux pas with tails...). does that carry across all collars? I'm looking towards a club collar shirt for formal daywear. The Saville Row Shirt company have some very nice examples on their site, currently reduced in price too, but they have single layers cuffs only. (Designed in the popular 'covertible' style, to be worn either as barrel, button cuffs, or with cufflinks.... naturally the buttons would be coming straight off as soon as I opened the packaging!). I'm curious as to how big of a faux pas that slightly more formal cuff style would be with the rounded collar..... I'm thinking no biggy, myself, but curious as to other opinions. Perhaps I should also add that, gauche as it may be, I draw the line at fiddling with separate collars, an attached being so considerably more convenient to launder.... I'll probably weaken and pick up a couple of those shirts by the time anyone reads this, so. lol

For formal daywear the ideal shirt to wear if wearing a stiff wing collar is the exact same tunic shirt as the full evening dress version (i.e. starched front with starched single cuffs) worn with gold or MOP shirt studs. However, a soft tunic shirt is equally correct nowadays. As with wing collars (which must always be detachable and stiff), they are meant for bow ties or formal Ascot cravats. Neckties are better on turndown collars which should be worn with a double cuff shirt.

Morning dress is considered less formal than full evening dress (which in some versions are considered court dress that can be worn at any time of the day) so it can take turndown collars.

IMO, turndowns should have double cuffs so they are substantial enough (hence why singles are starched stiff) but no one will notice eitherway.

 

[Edward]

For formal daywear the ideal shirt to wear if wearing a stiff wing collar is the exact same tunic shirt as the full evening dress version (i.e. starched front with starched single cuffs) worn with gold or MOP shirt studs. However, a soft tunic shirt is equally correct nowadays.

Yes, the idea for me (eventually I'll pick one up) will be a stiff fronted shirt with an attached club collar.... For white tie wear, I have one of the Vintage Shirt Company's traditional shirts with the attached collar - ideal. I do like a stud front shirt, though when wearing a cravat or four in hand (I'm a fan of the silk cravat tied with a four in hand knot i this context, myself), between that and the waistcoat the studs aren't visible. Taking into account too the higher gore of a daywear waistcoat.... I think a stiff front and the studs would work well, though, with a bow tie (Churchill style), as they'd at ;east be seen then. Mind you, I do enjoy the feel of a stiff fronted shirt, and it helps to keep the gut in...

IMO, turndowns should have double cuffs so they are substantial enough (hence why singles are starched stiff) but no one will notice eitherway.

True..... now, if only I can convince myself it doesn't matter that much... lol. At the sale price, I've gone ahead and ordered a couple of those shirts anyhow, we'll see how they turn out.

 

[Cody Pendant]

Not so fast!

They've been around since the beginning. I just don't understand them being talked about as a sartorial faux pas now when they never were before.

Actually they were. A lot.
Mat, may I propose that it depended on the crowd you ran in. It seems to me that this discussion comes up and centerers around younger folks who have mostly never seen or experienced anything else but the politically correct world we now live in.
As a short aside and history lesson, many of the folks here view the past with rose colored glasses, a modern perspective on the past.
The white elephant in the room that rarely gets discussed here is that the rich and elite were SNOBS! Gasp, and horrors.
Yes, they looked down their noses at the rest of the world. Many of the manors and tid bits that we all discuss as culture and correctness here were created to differentiate the classes. Your status and social level were judged by what level of rules of etiquette you had been trained in and could preform.
That is the whole meaning of the phrase "faux pas" is a violation of accepted social norms. If you failed one of the tests you had committed one. You were immediately exposed as an impostor, lower class, a mere mortal, an uncouth person!
The cut of your clothes and the hand of the cloth were an indicator.
By the way "Bond" was an impostor, his knowledge of the finer things was how he fooled the elite that he was hobnobbing with, despite not quite fitting in, he was an employed person, not a true man of leisure.
As wrong as it may seem now, the upper-crust have to have some means to keep from being infiltrated and their plans for continued world domination exposed!

 

[Tomasso]

By the way "Bond" was an impostor, his knowledge of the finer things was how he fooled the elite that he was hobnobbing with, despite not quite fitting in,

Actually, Bond would probably be considered an elite as he attended both Eaton and Cambridge.

 

[Charlie Huang]

Actually, Bond would probably be considered an elite as he attended both Eaton and Cambridge.

Eton.

 

[Charlie Huang]

Yes, the idea for me (eventually I'll pick one up) will be a stiff fronted shirt with an attached club collar.... For white tie wear, I have one of the Vintage Shirt Company's traditional shirts with the attached collar - ideal. I do like a stud front shirt, though when wearing a cravat or four in hand (I'm a fan of the silk cravat tied with a four in hand knot i this context, myself), between that and the waistcoat the studs aren't visible. Taking into account too the higher gore of a daywear waistcoat.... I think a stiff front and the studs would work well, though, with a bow tie (Churchill style), as they'd at ;east be seen then. Mind you, I do enjoy the feel of a stiff fronted shirt, and it helps to keep the gut in...

*runs in waving arms about*

No! For white tie you should use the stiff fronted starched tunic shirt with detachable stiff wing collar! Unless, of course, you starch the said shirt and attached collar to the appropriate stiffness.

 

[AntonAAK]

One thing I would like to add is that I think the whole idea of notched lapels being too much like a business suit is ridiculous IMO. There are peaked lapel business suits so the same could be said for the peaked lapel dinner jacket. There also DB business suits yet I don't see anyone criticising the DB dinner jackets.

I know that notched lapels are more common on business suits, but peaked lapels are still around and were quite common in the era we are all interested in.

Therefore, if one is to criticise the notched lapel dinner jacket it can only be on aesthetic reasons and not for resembling a business suit.

I disagree. Certainly peaked lapel business suits exist but when did you last see one? I don't think I have ever seen someone in a business environment sporting an SB PL suit. I wish I had. DB is more common and had a fair amount of popularity in the eighties but you do not see them too often today.

The standard business uniform today is a single breasted notched lapel suit. People tend to stick with that because they do not wish to stand out. I would speculate also that there are many people who do not wish to stand out on the rare occasions when they are forced to wear black tie and would choose to wear something as close as possible to their normal day uniform.

I am not therefore criticising NL DJs for resembling business suits. Merely speculating that that resemblance might contribute to their current ubiquity.

 

[JimWagner]

I disagree. Certainly peaked lapel business suits exist but when did you last see one? I don't think I have ever seen someone in a business environment sporting an SB PL suit.

I am thinking that it would be difficult to even find an SB PL business suit these days unless it was bespoke. Not saying they don't exist. According to a few places I googled getting the lapels right on a SB PL is challenging. That seems to pretty much rule out off the rack mass produced suits except for the most expensive brands.

The vast majority of men don't spend any more on their business suits than they have to. They are a uniform by and large, nothing more. And today a peaked lapel is considered too formal for business. So the variances in what the manufacturers supply is somewhat narrow.

 

[Edward]

I am thinking that it would be difficult to even find an SB PL business suit these days unless it was bespoke. Not saying they don't exist. According to a few places I googled getting the lapels right on a SB PL is challenging. That seems to pretty much rule out off the rack mass produced suits except for the most expensive brands.

The vast majority of men don't spend any more on their business suits than they have to. They are a uniform by and large, nothing more. And today a peaked lapel is considered too formal for business. So the variances in what the manufacturers supply is somewhat narrow.

Peak lapels have made somethhing of a comeback in the last couple of years over here, though more as a fashion thing and very far from the norm in the City. Also, they have been passed through the filter of Sixties design inspiration, so they tend to be very much on the narrow side, to the point where they look a very different creature than the thirties or forties equivalents.

One thing I would like to add is that I think the whole idea of notched lapels being too much like a business suit is ridiculous IMO. ...Therefore, if one is to criticise the notched lapel dinner jacket it can only be on aesthetic reasons and not for resembling a business suit.

It's not the notch lapels alone that give this impression, though, but the simple fact that, as said above, so many companies nowadays skimp on their patterning and for their "dinner suits" simply churn out a black two piece based on the same lounge suit pattern (down to the pocket flaps) with the addition of a satin trouser stripe, and satin lapels. The notch lapel look did become briefly fashionable in the early mid nineties, though I suspect that was as much the influence of what was avaiable as anything. It has now become something of a standard simply by dint of being as common as the shawl. (It is, of course, not confined to the cheapest end of the market - see, for instance, photos of Philip Windsor wearing notch lapels on manys an occasion, and he's a man who has access to the finest of Saville Row product.)

*runs in waving arms about*

No! For white tie you should use the stiff fronted starched tunic shirt with detachable stiff wing collar! Unless, of course, you starch the said shirt and attached collar to the appropriate stiffness.

lol I'm normally a sitckler for keeping things 'right', but the spearate collar is just so damned inconvenient - and really (if someone who wants to dress everyday like it's somewhere between 1930 and 1959 can say thhis with a straight face) an obsolete relic from the days when folks changed the collar to save laundering the shirt that often! The attached collar on my shirt certainly has body to it, at least as much as any separate collar I've handled. The front panel is strached to be positively corset-like, as are the cuffs.... This is the one shirt I leave to the dry cleaners to deal with to keep it like that....

 

[Edward]

FWIW.... The shirt I am wearing in this photo, from New Year's Eve, is the one from the VSC. If you look closely, you can see that the attached collar has a fair bit of body to it, see how it stands.... Very comfortable to wear too (and fortunately I've lost a touch of weight since this photo was taken, so will look somewhat less corpulent when next it is worn).

(ETA: PLEASE excuse the nasty, polyester gloves I am wearing in this shot..... three gloves of the two proper, cotton pairs I have were discovered to be missing several hours before I went out, and these were all I could source in that timeframe.... Time the Matchbox was better organised...).

 

[Orgetorix]

I was pretty forceful in advocating for the acceptability of the NLDJ the last time we discussed this topic. I've stayed out of this discussion so far because, well, I've made all my points (here and the pages following), and principally because the person who was most strident in abhorring the notch lapel has ceased posting here for some time.

It looks like most of the rest of the Lounge is more or less on the same page.

 

[Macheath]

No matter how strong one's aversion may be to Notches on DJ's, there are really too many far worse and commonly seen transgressions (clip on ties, unconventional ties, lack of waist covering, and so on) in evening attire for any particular lapel style to be considered a "faux pas".

 

[Feraud]

I was pretty forceful in advocating for the acceptability of the NLDJ the last time we discussed this topic. I've stayed out of this discussion so far because, well, I've made all my points (here and the pages following), and principally because the person who was most strident in abhorring the notch lapel has ceased posting here for some time.

It looks like most of the rest of the Lounge is more or less on the same page.

You said it all in that thread very well and with supporting evidence. :eusa_clap

 

[anon`]

You said it all in that thread very well and will supporting evidence. :eusa_clap

It's good to have supporting evidence. Like a genuine, dated example of the article in question

 

[Flat Foot Floey]

I am thinking that it would be difficult to even find an SB PL business suit these days unless it was bespoke. Not saying they don't exist. According to a few places I googled getting the lapels right on a SB PL is challenging. That seems to pretty much rule out off the rack mass produced suits except for the most expensive brands.

The vast majority of men don't spend any more on their business suits than they have to. They are a uniform by and large, nothing more. And today a peaked lapel is considered too formal for business. So the variances in what the manufacturers supply is somewhat narrow.

I have a little hope that they might come back. Theyre very rare...that's correct. I have seen some when I was window shopping in prague this january.

Maybe they will have a comeback?

 

[Ed13]

I am in the camp of notch lapels not being acceptable.

It was mentioned earlier that standards were invented by the elite to separate themselves from the masses and I believe this is correct. At the same time it is perfectly acceptable to me. This is the way the world works.

While my family background is anything but elite (poor and immigrants) they even knew there were rules to be followed. If you do not work in a professional field you probably have more leeway in dress but most should not. I refuse to work with a lawyer, accountant or banker that does not understand proper dress. This may be snobbish but it is what it is. I know I am not the only one that feels this way.

As far as notch lapels, it may be acceptable with some, it is not acceptable with all. If you are an artist or Hollywood type then go crazy. If not, wearer beware. The clothing snobs will be watching.