I love evening wear. Evening wear is fun. And even though I'm biased because I really love it, I always think, “I don't know why guys don't like dressing in black tie”. For me, it gives you an excuse and opportunity to dress in a manner where you get to display your personality with your sartorial ensemble much more than you can with a navy blue or a gray suit.
We do a lot of weddings because I’ve adopted this obsession with evening wear. The biggest thing I try to convey to our customers is if you're getting married, I get it, not every wedding is going to be ultra formal. But if your bride is going to be wearing a formal gown, you should match that energy with at least a tux. And if you’re a man marrying a man, or a lady marrying a lady, maybe you should BOTH wear tuxedos!
So if you're wearing a tux, please don't rent it. You might be the guy who doesn't really get it and says, “this is going to be good enough and I'm going to look good”. No, you're not. You're not going to look good. I'm telling you, you're going to look bad. You're going to look like you didn't care and you didn't put any effort into it. Look, you don't have to get it from us. You don't have to get it from Brioni. But there is a solution out there for you to purchase and own, whether it's $500, $5,000 or all the way up to $25,000 or more.
Also, if your wedding is formal, stop writing “Black tie optional.” You want people to not wear tuxedos, just put optional. And then They won't. If you give someone the option to not wear a tux, they're going to take it. And guess what? Your photos are only as good as how people show up.If people show up looking good, those photos are going to look great. But if you don't convey the formality of what you want the attire to be, you're going to get Uncle Joey, who comes in with a blue blazer that he bought at Stein Mart 20 years ago that has gold buttons on it with a polo button down shirt and jeans, topped off with a pair of New Balance sneakers because he's got like orthopedic pain. And he's like, oh, you said black tie optional.
If you’re saying formal black tie, don't even say formal, just say black tie, because formal can mean a lot of things. If you say black tie, you’ve got to say we mean tuxedos and formal gowns. Now, it might mean that, you know, Uncle Joe might say, “hey, I don't have a tuxedo, so I'm out.” Honestly, sometimes that's fine. Coming from someone who had to invite a billion people to my own wedding. I think everyone ends up inviting people that they don't really want there in the first place, but invite them just for the sake of it. I think that it might eliminate people that you don't want there. But I think that we need to stay strict to dress codes.
All in all, if your wedding is formal, wear a tux. But again, buy it. And if you're not going to a wedding, if you're not getting married, buy a tux anyway.