A black tie invitation is one of the few dress codes that leaves very little to interpretation. It is not a suggestion to dress nicely, nor an invitation to wear the darkest suit in your closet. It is the host telling you, quite deliberately, what kind of room they intend to create. Your responsibility as a guest is to respect it.
There is something rather refreshing about that certainty. At a time when nearly every standard of dress has become negotiable, black tie remains remarkably clear. The occasion has already made the decision for you. All that remains is knowing how to do it properly.
That does not mean every man in the room must look identical. Quite the opposite. Once the uniform is understood, there is plenty of room for taste in its details. But black tie is one of those rare instances where understanding the rules should come before deciding which ones you would like to bend.
And when in doubt, I have always preferred being slightly overdressed to being remembered as the one, or even worse, the plus-one, who misunderstood the invitation.
I have included a starter set for the average man, suitable for most black tie endeavors in current times. Keep in mind I have embedded links to each product within the image, so you never have to go searching - just click on the item and it will take you directly to the product.
BLACK TIE
What It Means
Black tie is evening dress. In modern and most applicable terms, a tuxedo.
The "dinner jacket" itself began as something comparatively informal. In 1865, the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII, commissioned Henry Poole of Savile Row to make a shorter evening coat for private dinners at Sandringham, dispensing with the tails of traditional full evening dress. That coat became the ancestor of what the British call the dinner jacket and Americans came to know as the tuxedo.
More than a century and a half later, the uniform has changed remarkably little.
What To Wear
A black or midnight-blue dinner jacket with silk/satin-faced peak lapels or a shawl collar. Matching evening trousers (the pant part of the American ensemble), traditionally with a silk braid down the outside seam. A proper white tuxedo shirt. Black bow tie. Cufflinks and stud set. Black patent or highly polished evening shoes.
If the pants require something at the waist, traditionally that means a cummerbund rather than a belt.
Midnight blue is every bit as legitimate as black. In fact, the original Poole evening coat was blue.
What Not To Wear
A black business suit is not a tuxedo.
Neither is a navy suit worn with a black necktie. Avoid brown shoes, belts, ordinary dress shirts and the temptation to interpret “black tie” as an instruction merely to wear a tie that happens to be black.
There is plenty of room for individuality in black tie dress, but first learn the uniform.