Dinner Jacket

A dinner jacket has that certain image quality that hearkens back to a formal era of a hundred years ago in England with the all pomp and ceremony that accompanied formal dinners held by wealthy land owners and such. When such dinners were being held, it was unheard of not to attend without wearing a Dinner Jacket since these were always formal events and formality was never something overlooked. If you have ever watched the hit British TV shoe "Downton Abbey", you quickly start to see and understand where many of our formal wear traditions like the dinner jacket come from.

The dinner jacket always has to have one thing in common no matter what the color is and that is the use of satin. Satin on the lapels, satin trimming on the pockets of the jacket and satin covered buttons. You see, satin is the one thing that gives a dinner style jacket it's formal look. If you took the satin adornment away, you wouldn't have a jacket that looks special and different from a suit jacket. The satin fabric has that special decorative touch to show people that this is a dinner jacket and not some suit jacket or blazer.

Another thing about the dinner jacket is that it is always to be worn in the evening and never sooner. It is completely improper to wear a dinner jacket in during the daytime in the afternoon. Why else would it be called a dinner jacket to begin with. You figure that you're standard formal dinner would maybe start around 7 or 8 at night and go on until close to midnight when the last brandies were enjoyed.

The dinner jacket is actually the precursor of the modern tuxedo as we know it. Back then, the original tuxedo was just a formal dinner jacket with the satin adornment matched with a pair of black slacks that eventually grew black satin stripes on the legs turning the tuxedo into a full formal suit. Either way, there is something certainly sophisticated and luxurious about living in an era when gentlemen wore dinner jackets to special formal dinners.