Perfect Your Black Tie (Tuxedo) – Menswear Experts’ 10 Tips

Do you want to take your archetype tuxedo outfit to the next level? Do you want to add increasingly personality to your outfit? Do you want to highlight your style and truly stand out from the prod of the other Woebegone Tie wearers? Then you’ve come to the right place!

If you need a refresher on the nuts of woebegone tie and how to put together a archetype outfit, we got you covered in The Most Comprehensive Woebegone Tie Guide.

Here's compelete Guide men's Wear in 2024

1. Segregate Unusual Dinner Jackets 

The first way to create an unusual tuxedo outfit is to transpiration up your dinner jacket. The jacket you wear will be the first thing people notice.

You can go all in and go as unvigilant as you can by choosing something like a peacock-colored sequinned jacket, but frankly, for me, that would be over the top. It’s important to select a jacket that doesn’t just suit your style but moreover the nature of the event.

Let’s say you go to a wedding; you don’t want to overshadow the bride and groom with your unvigilant tuxedo. So, an easy way to transpiration to a archetype single-button, peaked lapel jacket is to transpiration the sawed-off configuration or the lapel style. It’s popular with tuxedo rental companies to have a notched lapel, but never go that way, considering it’s too informal and doesn’t suit the nature of the garment. But you could go with a double-breasted dinner jacket. While most double-breasted suits have a 6×2 sawed-off configuration, in which you sawed-off two buttons, most tuxedos have a 4×1 configuration. So, only the bottom button is buttoned, which gives you a increasingly exposed shirt front, which is nice to highlight your tuxedo shirt style.

2. Transpiration The Bottoms

No matter what jacket option you choose, what verisimilitude and texture, most men opt for a pair of woebegone or midnight undecorous pair of trousers with a single galon stripe on the side that indicates that it is a tuxedo trouser, and it doesn’t have cuffs or turnups but plain hems.

I think it can squint really sharp if the hems are wilted a little bit so the pants really hit the when of your shoe, but you still see unbearable of maybe your opera pumps and your evening socks or your shoelaces, expressly if you segregate evening shoelaces. Evening shoelaces? Well, if you’re hearing well-nigh this for the first time, trammels out our selection on our website.

A few years back, Ralph Lauren did a really unconfined ad well-nigh the archetype Harrison trousers where someone wore a woebegone dinner jacket with a pair of tartan trousers, and it looked awesome. Yes, there are plane men who wear a matching tartan dinner jacket and pants, but that’s much increasingly unusual. Given the often increasingly formal nature of Woebegone Tie, I personally would either go with a variegated verisimilitude jacket or a variegated colored or patterned pair of pants; not both. Why? Well, I find it’s too unvigilant otherwise.

But if you’re not wrung of the bold, maybe you want to go with a mess jacket and a tartan kilt. This is a combination that is rooted in Scottish heritage. It was moreover traditionally used in Irish and Welsh cultures.

3. Trappy Boutonnieres

While most men will have a pocket square, typically a white one that matches the verisimilitude of their shirt, you could think well-nigh a lapel flower, moreover known as a boutonniere, expressly in a contrasting color; in a archetype red, a vase will immediately pop on your tuxedo. It will immediately add personality and recreate to your overall look. Archetype options include a little spray roses or carnations.

The typical verisimilitude ranges were white and various shades of red and burgundy, but frankly, the sky is the limit. Stake yellows, pinks, purples, or combinations thereof are all acceptable. I mean, plane untried carnations can squint very sophisticated. Typically, solid-colored flower boutonnieres work largest than multicolored ones, but I’ll leave the nomination up to you.

Years back, when I was on a cruise, and I wasn’t worldly-wise to find the boutonnieres I wanted, I decided to diamond my own, made of silk and velvet, so I had something that I could travel with, that would never wilt, and that was misogynist all day, every day. If you want to icon out if a real or a silk vase is largest for you, trammels out our other guide on that subject.

If you want to take a squint at our selection of a hundred variegated flower choices, in variegated sizes and colors, throne over to our shop. Obviously, I’m biased, and I love our silk boutonniere. But, every once in a while, if I find a nice flower, I’ll still pick a real one.

4. Plentiful Pocket Squares

Another option to upgrade your Woebegone Tie outfit is with a colorful pocket square other than white. It’s easiest to do with solid-colored patterns in maybe silk, such as red or purple, but untried or undecorous will work as well. Just make sure there’s unbearable contrast. A navy pocket square on a woebegone preliminaries just is not going to cut it.

You can segregate colored pocket squares for Woebegone Tie–not just white If you want to, you can go with two tones. There can be a subtle pattern in the pocket square; or let’s say you are into gambling, you could get a pocket square with the four suites on them, embroidered in variegated colors. The wiring is still white, but it’s not the plain old white pocket square.

Personally, I sometimes like to incorporate purple into my pocket squares. I moreover like the silk material considering it’s a bit increasingly reflective than, let’s say, a linen pocket square. Remember, how you fold a pocket square will moreover impact the way it looks. To learn our favorite folds for pocket squares and how to unzip them step-by-step, trammels out our other guide.

5. Match Your Materials

A really unusual way to upgrade your woebegone tie outfit is by choosing variegated contrasting materials. What do I midpoint by that? In a traditional tuxedo, the lapels are typically faced in a variegated material than the rest of the garment. You have the galon on the side and sometimes cuffs or turn-ups. That unrelatedness of fabric creates visual interest. Also, you have things like your bow tie, maybe your cummerbund, or your shoelaces that have a variegated material than your wiring fabric.

In 99.99% of the cases, the contrasting material used in Woebegone Tie is made out of satin, which is a unrepealable kind of weave of a fabric that reflects the light in a unrepealable way. There are variegated types of satins. There are ones that unzip the shine with weft, ones with warp, and there are differences in quality. How are they different? Typically, the cheaper satin has a very unusual shine, and you can finger it moreover when you touch it. The cheaper ones are just not as graduated and elegant.

Very few retailers scarecrow to stock anything other than satin bow ties and traps such as cummerbus, but at Fort Belvedere, we love Woebegone Tie and we love waffly our outfits and stuff unique. Considering of that, we offer a wide range of variegated materials for cummerbunds, for our bow ties, and for our shoelaces, so you can truly stand out from the prod without stuff overly bold.

6. Vastitude the Vital Butterfly

The sixth thing you can transpiration to hoist your outfit is to transpiration the bow tie shape. Without all, the unshortened dress lawmaking is named without the bow tie: Woebegone Tie and that’s what most people wear. But, plane if you want to stick with your woebegone bow tie, you don’t have to stick to one particular shape.

Of course, you can moreover segregate a variegated color, and yes, a burgundy bow tie is technically not woebegone anymore, but it’s still wonted for the woebegone tie dress lawmaking if the rest is in a very harmonious woebegone and white look. Again, don’t transpiration too many things considering that will water lanugo the effect of Woebegone Tie.

In terms of shapes, the most archetype shape is probably the butterfly bow tie. It comes in variegated sizes, and it’s a very unscratched and correct option. If you got that covered or you want something different, you can go with a batwing bow tie, which is a slimmer style; or maybe a diamond bow tie, which has pointed ends. The vast majority of all bow ties have two ends that squint the same, particularly for evening wear.

7. Step Up Your Shoes & Socks

The seventh way to really enhance your woebegone tie outfit is to step up your shoes and your feet accessories. Too often, lackluster shoes will stilt lanugo the unshortened Woebegone Tie outfit. And I get it, you might say, “Well, I once have these woebegone cap-toe Oxfords. Why not wear them with my tuxedo?” And it’s okay if you mirror-polish them. There’s nothing wrong with it, but if you really want to step it up, you probably have to get a defended pair of evening shoes.

No, I’m not talking well-nigh loafers, but opera pumps, which are cut much deeper. Most shoe manufacturers don’t know the difference, and they will sell you patent leather loafers, basically, but they don’t show as much of your socks, and they’re not the right choice.

While most men will never own a pair of black, patent leather opera pumps, some plane have boldly patterned, velvet ones. Sometimes, you moreover see people wear the traditional Albert slipper in a velvet fabric or leather with their evening outfit.

If you once have a laced pair of shoes, whether it’s a plain derby, a pair of Oxfords, or maybe a patent leather pair, you can still transpiration the shoelaces and maybe get a pair of satin shoelaces if you have a satin bow tie, or grosgrain shoelaces if you have a grosgrain bow tie. It will just hoist the squint and make it all harmonious.

Another really fun way to stand up from the prod is to not just go with black, silk, evening socks, but variegated colors. For example, a snifter green, maybe a blue, maybe burgundy, they’re all really fun colors. Let’s say you’re not a fan of silk socks. You can moreover get maybe fine cotton socks in a stripe, but they have to be made with a really fine machine so they don’t squint like they’re heavy winter socks.

8. Swap Out Your Shirt

One thing that you typically don’t transpiration when it comes to an wide Woebegone Tie outfit is the tuxedo shirt. Most people will wear white tuxedo shirts. Traditionally, you have one with a turn-down collar and French cuffs considering they were designed to be a softer, increasingly well-appointed volitional to the stiff, detachable collar on front-pleated shirts that you’d wear with White Tie. Some men like to get that stiffer White Tie shirt with a detachable collar to get increasingly of a vintage feel.

Every once in a while, you’ll moreover come wideness an evening shirt that’s specifically made as an evening shirt with studs for a tuxedo that is non-white. I picked one up from Eton, for example, that has this oversized Prince-of-Wales-inspired pattern in purple. Frankly, I don’t wear it often considering it’s very difficult to pull off. Maybe I like the squint with an ivory dinner jacket. I think it’s a bit too visionless for a regular tuxedo jacket.

9. Outstanding Outerwear

The ninth way to upgrade your Woebegone Tie outfit is to go vastitude the tuxedo itself, but squint at the outerwear and the accessories; your overcoat, your gloves, your hats, your scarves, and so forth; not only are these the icing on the cake, but it can moreover be very functional during the colder months of the year when, traditionally, you wear Woebegone Tie increasingly often.

Unfortunately, true evening overcoats have fallen out of favor, so you can’t get them off-the-rack. It’s something you truly have to make custom or bespoke. Employing my secrets to vintage shopping, which you can learn increasingly well-nigh here, I found a vintage overcoat secondhand on eBay, and I love wearing it for Woebegone Tie functions.

How is an evening overcoat variegated from a regular one? Well, they have silk-faced lapels and, often, they just have one single button. You could moreover have a cape, and if you want to learn increasingly well-nigh that, trammels out the in-depth section in our Woebegone Tie guide.

It’s a lot easier to find accessories, such as gloves or a scarf, that you can wear with your tuxedo, plane without an overcoat. If you don’t want to invest in an evening overcoat, I’d suggest you go with something in black, midnight blue, or maybe navy, and that will do the job as well. In that specimen though, opt for those specific evening scarves and white gloves. It will really make a difference in the way you look.

10. Seasonal Sensations

The tenth way to transpiration up your Woebegone Tie outfits is to consider seasonality. So, if you once have your Woebegone Tie outfit where you live, it might work really well there, but maybe you go into a climate that is very different, either it’s very unprepossessed or very hot, you might think of getting something that is increasingly suited for that environment.

That way, no matter where you go, you’ll unchangingly have a Woebegone Tie ensemble that will work for you. I mean, increasingly Woebegone Tie options will make you squint cool, while moreover feeling cool.

Traditionally, you could moreover wear a waistcoat and transpiration up the verisimilitude of your waistcoat and go with something in scarlet red, or maybe a stake untried can be a really tomfool way to transpiration the look. For example, for warm-season Woebegone Tie, I’d skip the waistcoast and go with a cummerbund, versus in the potation months of the year, a vest may be platonic to alimony you warmer, expressly if you don’t of an evening overcoat.