I recently worn a tropical-weather dinner jacket for the first time, and had to spend some time deciding on the best accessories to match it with.
The ivory dinner jacket is typically associated with burgundy-colored accessories such as a silk pocket square, a red boutonniere, or even a cummerbund.
I'm not a big fan of the cummerbund, so let's get that out of the way first. I do own one, that I used to wear when my only tuxedo was made-to-measure at a shop that doesn't make proper (read: low-cut) waistcoats, and instead incurs in the all-too-common practive of repurposing suit vests. Those days are gone now that I have a better, bespoke three-piece dinner jacket.
Waist Covering
I decided to go with my traditional dinner jacket's waistcoat, in midnight blue wool. The stark contrast with the cream-colored jacket might seem a bit jarring at first, but it could be worse (i.e., the waistcoat could be true black), and if you think about it for a second, a white waistcoat wold look weirder.
There is a recurring theme here of solving the "problem" of matching adjascent ivory (the jacket) and pure white (shirt) garments. Perosnally, I really don't like when contrast is too low. It reminds me of trying to match an orphaned suit jacket with a separate pair of pants, that are of a very close (but not exact) color. It stands out more that you would think.
In this sense, the midnight blue waistcoat provides a subtle “trim” between tha jackert's lapels and the white expanse of the shirt; I really like it. Of course, I was inspired by Harrison Ford in "Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom".
Mind you, I still believe the "platonic ideal" of tropical dinner jacket is the double-breasted, 4x1 shawl-collar famously worn by Humphrey Bogart in “Casablanca”, but remember that this jacket came “for free”.
Chest Accessories
Next are the pocket square and boutonnière. In my opinion, the former is obligatory, while the latter is an optional, nice touch (we are discussing these two together, because their physical proximity forces them to interplay).
Matching the colors of these two is obviously a no-no, so —unless we want to stray into really experimental territory— there's only two options here: white square with red carnation, or burgundy square with white carnation.
The first option suffers from the “subtle contrast” problem discussed above. Also, the various boutonnière colors carry some implicit meanings, and the white one is the safest. Personally, I think the red carnation is a bit too theatrical and extravagant (like the shiny, satin silk facings).
Additoionally, the white carnation suffers much less from the contrast problem discussed above than the white pocket square does, simply because it has a very visible, large-pitch texture created by the numerous petals that not even a ribbed-silk white square could compete with.
The Result
So this is my final answer to the conundrum:
How do you like it?
Comentarios