We met the Count at Diversey-River Bowl, stocking up on Halloween treats. His party hearty gear and malevolent grin growled upscale bachelor bash. But our Fashion Cryptologists–still curious, if cautious–wanted to know more . . . maybe more than was good for them.
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Blue bloods of the era opted for basic black. Edward (aka Bertie), prince of Wales, commander of the world’s largest wardrobe, insisted that high-flying nightlife be conducted in funereal trousers and tails, a refined version of the proletarian split riding coat. (Boys could get away with the cropped spencer jacket, named after Earl Spencer, who once inadvertently ignited his tails.) One Mrs. Humphrey, the Miss Manners of her day, warned that a man in the wrong hat risked being “condemned more universally than if he had committed some crime.”
Full dress dressed down after 1886, when Griswold Lorillard waltzed into the Autumn Ball at the Tuxedo Park Club in Orange County, New York, wearing–of all things–his smoking jacket. The scandalously comfortable look was dubbed the tuxedo and enthusiastically endorsed by society sorts, waiters, and marching tuba corps.
The Fashion Statement, its fearsome formality updated for the working stiff and accessorized with a potent potion, echoes the look’s many lives: “Dressed to kill.”
