Feraud
Bartender
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Evan Everhart said:I am sure that the individuals who have chosen to wear those abominable notched lapel dinner jackets have done so because they either "feel" that it looks good, or because they were negligently informed that it was either "fashionable", or "stylish", or "correct". Any such assertion is of course incorrect. There are rules sir, and there is taste. The notched lapel dinner jacket is not approved of by the one nor is it an expression of the other.
Because you have completely ignored Orgetorix's post I will quote it below.
Please read it and feel free to debate how "wrong" a notch lapel is in terms of rules without the verbose rhetoric. Taste is subjective and therefore irrelevant in this particular discussion of the period correctness (excluding the aesthetic) of wearing a notch lapel.
Please provide some historical background as others have done to back up their case.
Once again for your reading pleasure-
Orgetorix said:There is absolutely, positively no possible way that anyone can legitimately argue that notch lapels are historically "incorrect." Not as far as United States sartorial history is concerned. They have, quite simply, been around as long as Americans have been wearing dinner jackets. Period photos, catalogs, and advertisements bear this out, as they show them as early as the first decade of the 20th century. Maybe earlier. Here's a 1927 catalog page, just for example:
Argue, if you like, that they weren't as common as peaks or shawls in the prewar era. I admit it. I have a 1902 photo where the notch lapel wearer is outnumbered 15 to 1 by peaks and shawls. But there is one there, and he's no less appropriately dressed than the others.
Argue, if you like, that they aren't as elegant as a peak or shawl lapel. I agree with you. Notch lapels sometimes seem a bit too much like a business suit. I think there's nothing as elegant as a well-cut peak-lapel dinner jacket ensemble.
Argue, if you like, that notch-lapel dinner jackets are an unfortunate Americanization, a sartorial maladaptation of something the British have always done better. Ok, maybe. I'm a bit of an Anglophile myself. But the fact that I like my suits with double vents doesn't mean I won't wear one with a single vent, or that I'll tell people they're incorrect if they do.
Just don't try to argue that a notch-lapel jacket is somehow "incorrect" or inappropriate. It's a perfectly acceptable option with over a hundred years of precedent. It may be the red-headed stepchild of the evening formalwear clan, but it's certainly a legitimate member of the family.
Not sorry for the rant.