Lucius Beebe in White Tie

[voxsartoria]

Opening night, Metropolitan Opera, 1946.



Garden Court, Palace Hotel, San Franscisco, 1960.

[Noble Savage]

As above, in color.

Journalist Lucius Beebe beside a gold place setting in the glass roofed Garden Court of the Palace Hotel, San Francisco. His walking stick once belonged to a Wells Fargo stage driver. Original Artwork: A Wonderful Time - Slim Aarons (Photo by Slim Aarons/Getty Images)

https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news ... popup=true

[Noble Savage]

(Original Caption) Photographic model Wilma Baard is shown with some of her fifteen uncles who introduced her to Cafe Society in a hilarious gag aimed at the costly debuts of Mayfair's wealthy daughters. The party for Miss Baard, who is a daughter of a barge captain, was held at the Chez Firehouse and all guests were invited on Dutch treat basis. Guests included prominents of the lampooned social set, movies, stage, opera, art, with a few of the nobility thrown in. Some of Wilma's uncles in the above photo are artist Peter Arno (arm linked with Miss Baard's), artist McClelland Barclay (left of Miss Baard), jeweler Jules Glaezner (left of Barclay) and left with heavy chain in pocket, society commentator Lucius Beebe.

The debut apparently, was a success. TIME, in Milestones, Mar. 10, 1941, notes “Married. Wilma Baard, 23, blonde model and bargemaster's daughter who achieved fame two years ago when 14 Manhattan café cowboys sponsored her "debut" in protest at the Brenda Frazier hoopla; and Count Nava del Tajo, 25, distant relative of the Duke of Alba; in Manhattan.” http://content.time.com/time/subscriber ... 56,00.html



https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news ... -her-news-
photo/515209092?adppopup=true

[Noble Savage]

Lucius Beebe at the Metropolitan Opera, November 11, 1946

UNITED STATES - NOVEMBER 11: Lucius Beebe at the Metropolitan Opera, November 11, 1946 (Photo by Bert Morgan/Getty Images)

https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news ... popup=true

[Noble Savage]

In London, Beebe ordered his suits from Savile Row’s Henry Poole & Company, and he looked on being measured for a bespoke suit as something akin to taking the sacrament. The venerable gentleman’s tailor was “not only a cathedral of waistcoats and hunting pinks, [but] a repository of Victorian grandeurs establishing continuity with the past and the great names of English legend.” Throughout his life, his business suits from Poole duplicated the lines of one made for him in New York in the early ’20s, which were, he says, “cut from doomsday fabrics, with notched lapels and four buttons.” The suits were only one component of the grand effect. The New Yorker helpfully provided its readers with a partial inventory of Beebe’s dressing room:

He has a good evening dress coat lined with mink and collared in astrakhan, which he has insured for $3,000, and an old rag also lined in mink, but with a sable collar, which didn’t seem worth the bother. The jewels necessary to set off this splendor, or else hold it together, include three gold cigarette cases (although he rarely smokes anything but cigars), valued at $700 each [in 1937 dollars], a cashmere sapphire cabochon ring worth $1,200, a single emerald stud at $500, and a platinum evening watch which cost $10,000.

Though Beebe thought of formal clothes “quite literally as the livery of my profession,” he disingenuously complained that “Walter Winchell and other scoundrels” had so unfairly pegged him as “a dude among the legmen, a penny-a-liner of vast and effulgent sartorial resource” that it “became necessary for him to lay in a stock of tail-coats, Inverness cloaks, and collapsible top hats to live up to the legend.” Things had gotten so out of hand that “as time passed it was impossible for him to identify himself at his bank unless he was wearing court attire complete with orders and a dress sword.” (The third-person voice was typical Beebe. Using the first person apparently came off as too chummy.) — http://www.dandyism.net/2008/04/26/step ... -part-two/

[couch]

Just revisiting this and noticed for the first time that in all the photos Beebe is wearing a turndown collar with his white tie ensemble. Are his motives for doing so recorded anywhere? Was it a blow for comfort à la the PoW's innovations, a deliberate "signature" differentiation, a reference to a little-known but "correct" variation (news to me if so), an ironic "one wrong thing" to épater les bourgeois in the spirit of the "debut" in the first photo, something else?

[Noble Savage]

Whatever Lucius Beebe's motivation, he certainly has his followers. "In 2007 the Queen met President George W Bush at a formal white-tie state dinner at the White House" — and the President wore a turn down collar. President Obama also wore a turn down collar with white tie for dinner.

https://news.sky.com/gallery/the-queen- ... 0-10664822

http://the-shoe-aristocat.blogspot.com/ ... ssing.html

[Luca]

I think that from the late 1930s to the 1950s, when (some) people wore evening dress (black or white tie) very often, some folks just gave up on stiff collars or wore them rarely for reasons of comfort.
In black tie, while well into the 1920s wing and other high collars were more common, by the 30 it looks like the turn-down soft collars are beginning to win and post-WW2 they completely took over. It was in the 1980s revival of elegance and earlier tropes that wing collars began to make a comeback. These were often (and remain often) of 'sacrificed' size and rigidity but, when well executed, I quite like them.

[Concordia]

Nowadays, Jermyn Street shirtmakers will refuse to make a wing-collared shirt for black tie. Even using two studs instead of three is reserved for white tie.

In the old days, men were dressing down a bit from their usual evening wear, so wing collars and starched shirts were not unthinkable. It was the DoW who popularized soft shirts in the evening, which make a lot more sense under the soft DB jackets.

I've been thinking about getting a pique front shirt with turn-down collar and white pique waistcoat for the black-tie dinner ensemble. But among the English, it might seem that I'd lost the memo on just how formal to be.

[andy57]

I've been thinking about getting a pique front shirt with turn-down collar and white pique waistcoat for the black-tie dinner ensemble. But among the English, it might seem that I'd lost the memo on just how formal to be.

I think a pique front shirt with a turn down collar is perfectly fine, as is a white pique waistcoat. Indeed, I have such a shirt from Budd and I am strongly considering commissioning a couple more when I stop by there next week. And I have never really cared much what my fellow English might think. I went off the reservation years ago.

[Noble Savage]

https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-the-p ... 64705.html

The Picture of Dorian Gray Year: 1945 USA George Sanders, Hurd Hatfield, Donna Reed Director: Albert Lewin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jp7xAM-ZCCg