[QUOTE=Otto]
You shouldn’t be seeing any tuxedos at weddings. Tuxedos are dinnerwear. For weddings one wears morning dress if one is a groomsman or a suit if one is a guest.
[/QUOTE]
I’ve always been told that a groomsman should only wear morning dress for a high noon wedding; the most formal kind. White tie is the evening equivalent.
I look damn good in a tux.
I feel damn good in a tux.
I haven’t needed a tux since 1988.
[QUOTE=BMalion]
God I hope not. I own 6 tuxedos, and it’s tough enough to find an occasion to wear them as it is. But that seems to be what’s happening.
[/QUOTE]
How does a person come to acquire six tuxedos?
[QUOTE=Beware of Doug]
Part of the change is that there is less social pressure to be “a gentleman,” leaving mostly the imperative to be “a man” or “manly.” A man and a gentleman are different roles. Sometimes they’re at odds. Style is more the concern of a gent, but it can also be seen as frivolous and vain. A manly man is uneasy with it at best. Frivolity is taboo to him, and he has more direct ways to show pride and vanity.
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, as a fan of Cary Grant and Humprey Bogart I’ve lamented this shift for a while. I don’t own a suit and I’m not a snappy dresser, but I do respect style, and a great emphasis on slouching manliness doesn’t do it for me. Ah well.
[QUOTE=Otto]
You shouldn’t be seeing any tuxedos at weddings. Tuxedos are dinnerwear. For weddings one wears morning dress if one is a groomsman or a suit if one is a guest.
[/QUOTE]
Thank you. The inappropriate application of dinner jacket technology has long been a pet peeve of mine.
My husband used to own a set of tails, but it was the uniform for the chorus he was in. Since then I think he’s worn a tuxedo maybe once every 5 years.
I haven’t had a formal gown since senior prom (not including my wedding dress.)
[QUOTE=Helena]
How does a person come to acquire six tuxedos?
[/QUOTE]
You know the way Costco is.
I’m 55 and have never owned nor worn a tuxedo.
I have a suit for wedding, funerals, dinners etc.
[QUOTE=middleman]
does the tuxedo stand a chance? Will it join its former compadres, top hats and tails, in the dustbin of fashion?
[/quote]
I sure as hell hope so, I’m not a fan of any form of suit/tux/anything with a necktie, the sooner they (the clothing, not the people wearing them) die a painful, screaming, agonizing death, the better 
[QUOTE=middleman]
Are you seeing the same decline or is it because I live in the South? Do you think one day we will all just wear star trek-esque body suits everywhere?
[/quote]
Up here in New England, I’m also seeing a reduction in the numbers of people sporting a hangman’s noos…err…tie, and if you ask me, it’s high time that useless affectation is relegated to the dustbin of history
however, I also don’t want to see the average person sporting a Trek-esque jumpsuit (attractive females are the obvious exception here 
), I have no desire to see Joe Overweight Average in a body-hugging bodysuit <shudder>
Jeans and a sweatshirt/t-shirt would be ideal, simple, functional, and COMFORTABLE
[QUOTE=middleman]
Should I be bothered by the fact that I spent $1000 on a suit that makes me stand out like a sore thumb?
[/QUOTE]
Hey, it’s your money, if you like the way you look in it, I have no problem with it, you’ll just never catch me wearing one of the sodding things, I wouldn’t be caught dead in one
…where can i get a smoking jacket? I really think those are cool, but guys don’t wear them much now!
I’ve only worn a tux once (a rental), for a formal dance in college. While it was comfortable and I looked good in it (though the most enjoyable part was my date removing it piece-by-piece afterwards), there simply hasn’t been an opportunity to wear one since.
At all the weddings I’ve been to in the last ten years (about 900, I was on wedding hall staff), the groom was almost always wearing a tux (mostly likely rented from the hall, as was the bride’s dress), but the fathers were wearing them maybe 5% of the time. The vast majority of the time they were wearing a black jacket and white shirt with white tie - the standard ‘wedding uniform’ here.
Everything is going downhill today. People dress like slobs. Everyone seems to think that flip flops are appropriate shoes for all occasions, and that’s the least of it. This current time period in America is the absolute worst time for fashion and aesthetics, ever. Seriously, ragged tunics stained with blood and torn by British musketballs were more appealing than the shit that passes for clothing today. Of course nobody gives a shit about suits anymore. They’re too uncomfortable, too inconvenient, don’t you see? Today’s culture is completely built around convenience, to the detriment of everything else, and it shows. Everything is mass-produced, made of cheap plastic, falls apart after a year’s worth of use, the cars look like shit and their interiors feel cheap and nasty even if the car cost fifty thousand dollars. People go around looking like they just got out of bed, and nobody gives a shit. As is being discussed in another thread, even the Army’s uniforms look dumpy.
This is a terrible time to be a style conscious man. You’ll even be stigmatized as “gay” if you care too much about it.
News flash: you can be a manly man, and still be a gentleman. Take a look at your grandpa’s old photo albums sometime, why don’t you. They were able to do it 50 years ago - but it’s a lost art now.
[QUOTE=ralph124c]
..where can i get a smoking jacket? I really think those are cool, but guys don’t wear them much now!
[/QUOTE]
Trust me, it isn’t worth the trouble it will cause. Not only will you need to look forever to find a decent one, and pay through the nose for it when you do, but the only feedback you will ever get from anyone but your full-length mirror will be on the order of “WTF is that?”, as if no one of sound mind and with any kind of a life would ever wear such a thing.
Which will likely be the situation with tuxedos in 40 years.
I think Bricker and I belong to the same organization.
I own one (with both black and white jackets) because officers and past presidents are expected to wear them once a month to the initiation meeting - where the new members are welcomed in.
Impresses the hell out of most of them. The ones that show up in business attire. Now the ones that show up in cutoff shorts and tee-shirts think we’re goofy penguins.
I enjoy wearing mine.
[QUOTE=Argent Towers]
Everything is going downhill today. People dress like slobs. Everyone seems to think that flip flops are appropriate shoes for all occasions, and that’s the least of it. This current time period in America is the absolute worst time for fashion and aesthetics, ever. Seriously, ragged tunics stained with blood and torn by British musketballs were more appealing than the shit that passes for clothing today. Of course nobody gives a shit about suits anymore. They’re too uncomfortable, too inconvenient, don’t you see? Today’s culture is completely built around convenience, to the detriment of everything else, and it shows. Everything is mass-produced, made of cheap plastic, falls apart after a year’s worth of use, the cars look like shit and their interiors feel cheap and nasty even if the car cost fifty thousand dollars. People go around looking like they just got out of bed, and nobody gives a shit. As is being discussed in another thread, even the Army’s uniforms look dumpy.
This is a terrible time to be a style conscious man. You’ll even be stigmatized as “gay” if you care too much about it.
News flash: you can be a manly man, and still be a gentleman. Take a look at your grandpa’s old photo albums sometime, why don’t you. They were able to do it 50 years ago - but it’s a lost art now.
[/QUOTE]
I am amazed by the utter lack of style-correction, GOOD style these days, but take heart. The seventies to me seemed a harbinger of T-shirts and bellbottoms, but, Oh, how quickly the bottom dropped out of that bucket, and the 80’s blossomed into a decade of tacky mixed with timeless fashion. I believe that when we emerge from this primordial slime of crap clothing, we shall be at the threshold of a bold new world, one which requires good grooming for citizenship!
[QUOTE=Argent Towers]
Take a look at your grandpa’s old photo albums sometime, why don’t you.
[/QUOTE]
My father’s father was either covered in coal dust or wearing faded jeans or overalls on his subsistence farm. I don’t think he was even in a genuine tux in his wedding photos ( my memory of that is hazy, I could be wrong ), likely couldn’t afford one or even necessarily find one to borrow in depression-era rural Pennsylvania. Sadly, I don’t come from a line of gentlemen ( or even normal white-collar professionals ) - just peasant farmers and miners. We of the plebeian class were never much for sartorial splendor ;).
Not that I’m claiming that that’s in anyway superior, mind you. But it wasn’t something I or my father was raised with. My mother’s side of the family, possibly, as they were very conscious of things like proper diction, despite a generally blue-collar background.
I really can’t speak for your grandpa, so this is totally a WAG, but I’d guess that he would have liked to have a nice suit, even if he couldn’t afford it. From what I know of history, even if people were poor back then, a man still tried to at least have one decent suit around, and he’d wear it with pride.
Nowadays nobody wants to look good. People don’t aspire to be seen as gentlemen.
[QUOTE=Argent Towers]
I really can’t speak for your grandpa, so this is totally a WAG, but I’d guess that he would have liked to have a nice suit, even if he couldn’t afford it. From what I know of history, even if people were poor back then, a man still tried to at least have one decent suit around, and he’d wear it with pride.
[/quote]
I’d say that’s probably a reasonable supposition. And I should clarify that I’ve certainly worn them, as has my father.
What we had no acquaintance with is formal dinner parties, country clubs and the like where tuxedos ( and whatever associated things are called ) were once common. Just alien to my family and that social milieu certainly wasn’t aspired to. Talking tuxs here now, not suits or jackets. Tuxs were at most for formal weddings ( which I’ll just say I kinda hate ) and one-time rentals for the prom. That’s about it.
No argument. Or at least fewer people do.
Of course I’m very much in the Diogenes camp on this one, but I certainly can understand those that bemoan the decline of formality. I don’t agree with it, but I get it intellectually. So you have my sympathies, even if I do quietly cheer for the dark side :).
See, part of it for me is that I wish I could go out wearing a nice tweed or cordoroy suit and an argyle vest and not have people assume I’m wearing it to make some kind of edgy, hip statement. There was a time when I would have proudly identified with the label of “hipster” (I mean, some people here might actually remember it, because I’ve undergone some fairly drastic changes in the few years I’ve been a member of this board.) But that ship has sailed. I no longer give a shit about any of the “hipster” culture nor do I want to be a part of it or be identified with it.
I just want to wear a tweed suit because I like it. But when every single other person is wearing the typical twentysomething schlub outfit, everyone assumes you’re trying to be hip.
I’m not trying to be hip. I wish everyone looked like me. I wish I could blend in in a sea of tweed suits. Then, at that point, you convey your individuality and sense of style by the little subtleties of the outfit - the tie, the collar, the vest, whatever. But when you’re the only person wearing a jacket and tie, nobody catches the subtlety because your outfit is so jarring to begin with.
[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
They’re too expensive, too uncomfortable and really cheesy
[/QUOTE]
They don’t cost any more than a suit - meaning you can get an OK one for a couple of hundred bucks. Likewise they’re no more uncomfortable than a suit.
Given that many people seem perfectly willing to spend twice that for a pair of name-brand jeans that need to be held up with one hand at all times lest they cause a neck-breaking accident, I find your basic premise flawed.
Just wait until ‘Formal Wear’ has been sucessfully redefined to be a sideways upside down golf visor, gold lamé ‘budgie smuggler’ speedoes, purple Timberlands and huge white sunglass frames (with no lenses). Then you’ll all be crying out for the good old days of the rental tux! 