Black Tie: Wing or Turndown Collar?

[kellyc34]

As a new member of the LL I would be interested to know members' preferences when it comes to choosing a shirt collar for a black tie event.
As a university student in Ireland, opportunities to air the dinner jacket are rare and when I do I like to take time putting the ensemble together. Needless to say the thought that most attendees put into their appearances is minimal -uncovered waists and notch lapels abound- but I like to take a more considered approach. An issue of particular interest it the "correct" shirt collar for a dinner jacket.
I am aware that in England etiquette mandates a turndown collar, while across the Atlantic there is a more flexible attitude. I have seen one or two AA illustrations where a wing collar is worn with a dinner jacket and noticed that Alan Flusser recommends a wing collar with a peaked lapel DJ.
Since black tie is in a way caught between white tie and lounge suits, each with their own appropriate collar, there seems to be no logically correct option. I think that both can be aesthetically pleasing. So what do members think?

Image of a wing collar worn with black tie:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Wbd-uMYmb_4/S ... casual.gif

[couch]

I believe stiff wing collars were quite usual with black evening waistcoats and dinner suits in the first couple of decades of the twentieth century, and Sator has posted many examples of period plates over the years. If I recall correctly, there are scenes in the Granada Television version of Brideshead Revisited showing Charles and possibly Sebastian dressed this way at dinner. Done well, with perfectly fitted and prepared components, I think this not only the most formal but the most elegant black tie look. It's interesting that the 1935 Lawrence Fellows illustration you cite shows the wing collar with a shawl-collar jacket and dark red waistcoat and hank--this is either dressing down the wing collar or dressing up the shawl, suggesting that by the '30s the wing collar was already becoming awkwardly stuffy for dinner dress. Perhaps this was due to the influence of Windsor, who was insistent about making his dinner clothes as comfortable as possible and wore the soft turn-down collar.

EDIT: I happened on this Fellows painting from 1933 that shows wing collars with traditional peak-lapel dinner suits, one of them on a not-yet-gray-haired man, so perhaps they had not gone quite out by that time, at least in the States, though the other men shown in the painting appear to be seniors and thus perhaps retaining a fondness for an older style:



At any rate, I can't think of an occasion at which I'd essay the stiff wing collar, black evening waistcoat, and peak-lapel dinner suit myself, much as I admire the look, since the ambient expectation of casualness has only increased. If your occasion and company would support that kind of traditional high elegance, and you can wear it with ease and élan, then by all means go ahead. If your setting and interlocutors look more like the poker crowd in the recent Casino Royale film, then I'd go with the turn-down collar. The one thing I would definitely avoid is a shirt with an attached soft wing collar. We see a lot of these in the States, and they are uniformly hideous.

[culverwood]

As you would expect from an Englishman I prefer the turndown collar with my shawl collared dinner jacket. It is a much easier look to get right, I have seen very few well done wing collars nearly all being the awful attached soft ones that couch mentions.

[Edward Bainbridge]

As you would expect from an Englishman I prefer the turndown collar with my shawl collared dinner jacket.

Do you mean once your DJ has a shawl collar, you choose a shirt with a turndown collar, or that wing collars are an American thing, while over here, we go for turndowns?

[culverwood]

I have always understood, but may be wrong, that the shawl collar dinner jacket is derived from the smoking jacket and thus the least "formal" style of DJ so most suited to a turndown collar.

[Edward Bainbridge]

Yes, I believe this is so; "fits" visually anyway (and this perception of mine is very probably influenced by convention). Just wasn't sure what you mean, thanks.

[kellyc34]

Thank you couch, for the information and the advice. I am inclined to agree with you. Perhaps this would be time to share the full extent of my black tie disaster.
Needless to say this was before I chose to educate myself on such matters. Anyway, my first DJ consisted of a black notch lapel DJ, no waist covering, completely inappropriate shoes and fly-fronted shirt with attached wing collar. Now that I have learned that I was the epitome of bad taste I have taken steps to improve the situation. I have already purchased black oxfords and I am planning to own a proper marcella dress shirt, sterling silver and onyx dress set and satin cummerbund before my next black-tie event. Sadly the notch lapel DJ must remain for now but as soon as funds allow I will be switching to a peaked lapel.
However bad I might have looked it was nothing compared to those around me. I say grey top-hats and high buttoning wait coats more appropriate for morning wear and in one case a luminous yellow waist coat. Ignorant as I was I was actually one of the better dressed attendees.
Thank god for online forums such as the LL. Otherwise I would have continued in life without having any regard to a sense of classic style.

[Simon A]

My friend, you were by no means the epitome of bad taste at all, even if your outfit was less than perfect. You were still learning the ropes, as were many of your fellow revellers, and we all have our hiccups in that phase. The epitome of bad taste is somebody middle-aged, who should know better, trying to reinterpret "Black Tie" in his own idiotic manner. Witness any number of fading actors on the red carpet on Oscar/Golden Globe nights with black skinny pants, black blazer and a black long tie tied in a schoolboy knot....or Karl Lagerfeld on any given day.

It is an old maxim that you can dress the plainest and scruffiest chap in Christendom in a well-cut dinner suit, and make him look great, so I am sure you will cut a dash in any surroundings in your upcoming outfit. Enjoy yourself.

[AndyM]

I agree with Simon A "you were by no means the epitome of bad taste at all". You had made the effort to dress well, so few even try these days. Enjoy dressing well, wear whatever you wear with confidence and pleasure. Personally I prefer the turndown collar, if you go for the wing collar then get a proper starched detachable collar. Welcome to the Lounge!

[couch]

By all means, Kellyc34. It sounds as though you're on a sound footing now. It's nearly always more successful to master the basics and then decide to what extent you want to adopt personal flourishes. Don't waist time on regret.

Your mention of the luminous yellow waistcoat reminds me of a question I've been meaning to ask, about silk waistcoats and their natural history. I'll post it in a separate thread.

Cheers,
couch

[YoungLawyer]

In the Granada series of Bridedshead, both Charles and Sebastian wear wing-collared shirts when at Oxford, and Charles for some years afterwards. Turn-down collars appear when he is on the liner travelling back from an extended tour of South America, on a boat from New York to England in the mid 1930s. At the same time, he has lost his 3 piece black tie and waistcoat, and sports a DB dinner jacket. The series was very well researched to match the change in fashions, although it represents an obvious decline in elegance.

Certainly for those of us living in England, there is no difficulty at all in wearing a 'proper' wing collar, and I will never understand those that say that it is:
Both Ede and Ravenscroft, and Budd will supply the shirts (although only Budd can supply the plain, not marcella, fronted shirt), and Ede, Budd, New and Lingwood, Gieves & H . (shirts too, but less well), will supply the collars in London, and for those outside London, all of these companies can post shirts or collars, and for those with more unusual tastes in collars, there is the Vintage Shirt Co. too. That list should easily be enough.

For those not in England, or for those on a more modest budget (although for a wardrobe staple which will last many years, is the shirt at about £85 (E&R) or £115 (Budd) (i.e. both less than a bespoke shirt) such a great drain on resources?), there is always e-bay, which could firnish many perfectly functional examples.

It has to be recognised that the membership of the lounge will tend to be the more formally dressed of those in a crowd, purely because we take more care about our appearence. Neat will always look formal; messy will look less formal. It naturally follows that if the LL membership always strive to be in the middle range of formaility at any event, then we are part of the drift towards informality which many of us complain about. The proper wing collar is alive and well, in London at least, for the moment. It's only if we abandon it for fear of looking too stuffy that it will become an item of caricature. There is no doubt that it is the more elegant option, and we shouldn't be afraid of it.

[YoungLawyer]

Perhaps that reply didn't answer the original post;
I'd go for the wing collar. When I was a student, I picked up a three-piece (1960s savile row) dj from ebay for about £70. The coat and waistcoat fitted very well, but I had to wear seperate trousers (a close match)(1930s Burton) found in a vintage shop in Hastings (£25). Having made that saving, I didn't have a problem with buying a couple of shirts from Budd, which I would recommend over Ede, even for the marcella front, as the sleeves are longer, and I learned how to starch properly the shirts and collars myself. I buy collars from the Chancery Lane branch of Ede, which is the only one to stock the higher 'grafton' wing collar. Both of those places do post. When compared to the approach of my contemporaries, who bought new dinner suits, for several hundred pounds, and designer evening shirts, I thought that there wasn't much comparison. Six years later, now I am no longer a student, and could afford a rtw dinner suit, I don't think I could actually improve on that effort, unless I had a full bespoke suit made.

[carl browne]

The wing collar can be a real challenge. The genuine article isn't seen in this country, and the shirts with the collars attached never look right. The collar is never sufficiently stiff, and the tie will make it pucker hideously. These shirts never have a loop in back to keep the tie from riding up and the ties tend to have hooks, eyes, tabs, or other hardware, which is invariably exposed. The only thing to do is to have a bespoke shirt made up by a knowledgable shirtmaker with a separate stiff shirt collar secured fore and aft with studs, and a bowtie devoid of hardware.

I did it, and wore the thing twice. I was happy with the appearance, but the collar studs undid me in the end--it was just too much work. I'm convinced that this whole thing only came into existence so that the wearer could demonstrate to the world that he had a valet--or at least an EXTREMELY patient and forgiving wife.

One day you'll discover as I did, that the exact moment you've failed your eighth attempt to secure the final stud, frustrated, winded, collar splayed like The Little Tramp's, your wife will be struggling with her frock, hose, shoes and assorted infrastructure, perfecting her coif, and applying strange perfumes, unguents, and powders, all of which leave dark and greasy smudges on white cotton. The help you receive, if any, will be sullen and intentionally incompetent. You will be reminded of the hour, that friends are waiting, that you are missing cocktails, which are rapidly going from pleasure to necessity. You will have an argument in the car. The drinks tray will be retired at the exact moment of your arrival. The wine at dinner will be undrinkable, and that will be the end of the wing collar.

[storeynicholas]

This all reminds me of an old saw:

"When a woman goes any place,
First, she makes up her mind -
And then her face."
NJS

[ay329]

Go for the wing (attached collar), this is what my shirtmaker is making for me to go with my evening dress tails...but it would equally look good for a black tie dinner jacket/tuxedo

My only question for others would be weather a black tie dress shirt also should have a pique or marcella bib in the front?