page_title: White tie
hierarchical_section_title: White tie
caption_attribution_description: English: Wallace Reid in Picture-Play Magazine, January 1919. Its original caption reads: "The only reason why they don’t let Wally play in dress-suit rôles all the time is that the causalities among the ladies would soon empty the picture houses. In fact, we feel that we’re toying with the fan hearts even to print this picture. In his next release, 'Some One and Somebody,' he appears with a new leading lady in the person of Ora Carew, a former Keystone favorite."
context_page_description: White tie, also called full evening dress or a dress suit, is the most formal in traditional evening western dress codes. For men, it consists of a black dress coat with tails worn over a white shirt, Piqué waistcoat and the eponymous white bow tie worn around a standing wingtip collar. High-waisted black trousers and patent leather oxford or optionally court shoes complete the outfit. Orders insignia and medals may be worn. Acceptable accessories include a top hat, white gloves, a white scarf, a pocket watch and a boutonnière. Women wear full-length ball or evening gowns and, optionally, jewellery, tiaras, a small handbag and evening gloves. Some white-tie functions also request that the women wear long gloves past the elbow.
  The dress code's origins can be traced back to the end of the 18th century. New fully black-coloured justaucorps styles emerged around the Age of Revolution, notably adopted by the bourgeois third estate of the Estates General of the Kingdom of France.
context_section_description: White tie, also called full evening dress or a dress suit, is the most formal in traditional evening western dress codes. For men, it consists of a black dress coat with tails worn over a white shirt, Piqué waistcoat and the eponymous white bow tie worn around a standing wingtip collar. High-waisted black trousers and patent leather oxford or optionally court shoes complete the outfit. Orders insignia and medals may be worn. Acceptable accessories include a top hat, white gloves, a white scarf, a pocket watch and a boutonnière. Women wear full-length ball or evening gowns and, optionally, jewellery, tiaras, a small handbag and evening gloves. Some white-tie functions also request that the women wear long gloves past the elbow.
  The dress code's origins can be traced back to the end of the 18th century. New fully black-coloured justaucorps styles emerged around the Age of Revolution, notably adopted by the bourgeois third estate of the Estates General of the Kingdom of France. Increasingly following the French Revolution, high society men abandoned the richly decorated justaucorps coats for more austere cutaway dress coats in dark colours, with cuts perhaps further inspired by the frocks and riding coats of country gentlemen. Gradually replacing also breeches, lacy dress shirts and jabots with plain white dress shirts, shorter waistcoats, white cravats and pantaloons, this became known as directoire style. By early 19th century Regency era, dark dress tailcoats with light trousers became standard daywear, while black and white became the standard colours for evening wear. Although the directoire style was replaced for daytime by black frock coats and bowties by mid-19th century, cutaway black dress tailcoats with white bowtie has remained established for formal evening wear ever since.
  Despite the emergence of the shorter dinner jacket (or tuxedo) in the 1880s as a less formal but more comfortable alternative, full evening dress tailcoats remained the staple. Towards the end of the Victorian era, white bow ties and waistcoats became the standard for full evening dress, known as white tie, contrasting with black bow ties and waistcoats for the dinner jacket, an ensemble which became known as semi-formal black tie.
  Following the counterculture of the 1960s, white tie was increasingly replaced by black tie as default evening wear for more formal events. Since late 20th century, white tie tends to be reserved for the most formal evening occasions, such as state dinners, audiences, in addition to balls and galas such as the Vienna Opera Ball in Austria, the Nobel Prize banquet in Stockholm, Mardi Gras balls in New Orleans, and the Al Smith Memorial Dinner in New York. White tie still also occurs at traditional weddings and church celebrations, at certain societies and fraternities, as well as occasionally around some traditional European universities and colleges.
caption: Wallace Reid wearing white tie in Picture-Play Magazine (1919)
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