Dinner Jacket

Men’s formal jacket introduced in the late 1800s by Griswold Lorillard during a party at the exclusive Tuxedo Club, in Tuxedo Park, New York. Since then, Americans have called it the tuxedo. For the Italians and French, it is a smoking, and for the English, a dinner jacket. It is usually black or dark blue, either single or double-breasted, with large silk lapels, trousers with a satin stripe running down the side, a waistcoat that was later replaced by a cummerbund, a white shirt, and a black bow tie. During the exciting ’30s, it made its appearance in CÂte D’Azur in a Summer version with a white jacket. In those same years, Marlene Dietrich launched the fashion of the woman’s tuxedo, an idea taken up more than once by the great names of fashion — among them Saint-Laurent and Chanel — in their Collections.