Doesn't suit you sir
To my immense disappointment this weekend I had to buy myself a dinner suit. For one, I've hit an age where my friends rather like the curio of dressing up posh on occasion. But mostly my need comes from my job, which dictates that I have to go to a couple of black tie dinners a year (no, I'm not a very part time waiter).
So, it's become economical for me to buy, rather than rent, something I didn't really want to do. I don't like wearing them, I don't feel particularly special in it. I feel my youth ebbing away as I'm shoe horned into the constraints of adulthood. I know, I'm probably too old to get sulky about wearing a tie, but I'd really prefer a groovy pair of trainers.
Simon's got his own dinner suit, which has been sagely handed down from his dad and has probably been hand stitched by an aged London tailor who works only by candlelight. When I heard that he was wearing his dad's dinner suit I envisaged huge flares, a purple dress shirt with capacious ruffles cascading down his chest and a vast velvet bow tie, like Eddie Large on his primetime Saturday evening show in the 70's. Sadly though, it's a classic cut that fits perfectly.
I'm not sure whether my dad has a dinner suit, he's several inches shorter than me, so I'd look a right banana if I did wear it. I had to get my own.
My brief was simple, keep it classic and keep the cost down. There's not a great choice of course, a dinner suit is a dinner suit. Each shop has a rack of classic black suits; stripe down the trousers, slightly shiny lapels, the works. They all also have a couple of white ones, and ties with diamante diamonds embedded, you know, for people who want to look a bit different and special (aka like a twat). I was flumuxed as the couple next to me in Marks and Spencer oggled the white suits with admiration, putting a range of multi-coloured bow ties up against the lapels to see how they matched.
I went classic, and cheap - machine washable even. Sullied and depressed, I also bought a parka with a furry hood, It's kind of cool, like what the kids wear.
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