marburyvmadison wrote:rogiercreemers wrote:In the building I work, as everyday wear, yes, wearing any suit would make you like someone coming to give a high-end guest lecture. Generally, students will wear (college) sweaters and jeans, with not a square inch of flannel in sight. But for more formal events, the navy suit will work perfectly well. Dinner jacket is great for formal hall (with gown, of course), but I'd ask myself if it would be worth the expense for bespoke if that meant cutting back on items of more general applicability (blazer/tweed or odd coats, ...)
So you would recommend a bespoke navy suit (that can be worn after graduation and to interviews), and a normal, possibly, MTM dinner suit (given that the chances of wearing a true dinner suit is rare)?
Or I just might flout tradition and get a 'dinner' suit that is more like a business suit (for added versatility)? Do students actually really adhere to true black tie/white tie conventions, or do most just slip on a black suit that they attempt to pass off as a dinner suit?
If you attend a black tie event at Oxford in a lounge suit, you will develop a reputation as one of the worst dressed men around. Do get a proper dinner jacket, as you will have occasion to wear it at least once a month, and possibly much more often. (It can vary a lot, depending on your college and the groups you associate with, but if you're on this forum...) Far better to buy second-hand or RTW outfit that meets the black tie dress code, than to try to get by with a black lounge suit and bowtie, no matter how well made. With every other male in a dinner jacket, you will stick out like a sore thumb.
By the same token, it would be a
major faux pas to attend formal hall or a sub-fusc occasion in a dinner jacket. For sub-fusc you need a charcoal or black lounge suit, and wear an ordinary white shirt (I recommend charcoal as it will be more useful as a business suit). At formal hall, requirements vary, at my college a suit was required on Sundays and Wednesdays and a jacket and tie were sufficient on other days (always with gowns, of course), and I believe our college had the strictest dress code. There are special guest dinners which are black tie, but this is always explicitly stated.
If you attend formal hall nightly (which I did, but most students do more occasionally), then you will have plenty of occasions to wear suits, but will more likely gravitate towards odd jackets. We are probably a minority who wear jackets and ties every day, but by no means an out of place one. For events though, the occasional iconoclast notwithstanding, everyone adheres to the dress code, although to varying degrees of quality depending on their sartorial knowledge, and means. The majority will probably have far less of both than you do--but you will encounter some with far, far more.
For bespoke, then, I think the most useful would be a charcoal suit or a tweed jacket. But the priority should be on having a complete wardrobe, covering all the necessary bases (which Busonian did a great job outlining above). If this is all in place, I say bespeak whichever thing it is that you will derive the most pleasure from wearing.