Men don’t look good in black tie. They might think that they look like Sean Connery in Dr No, but they end up looking like David Brent at the Wernham-Hogg annual Christmas do.
Black tie doesn’t lend parties glamour; it just makes them depressing. The one good thing about black tie is that it is an invariably reliable pointer to a terrible evening.
Agonising teenage balls, with adolescents clashing braces in dark corners? Black tie. Boorish sports club dinners at university? Black tie. Prize-giving evenings in cavernous hotel ballrooms? Black tie. Business conventions with an after-dinner speech by Jeffrey Archer? Black tie.
The words ‘black tie’ on an invitation hope to raise the spirits with suggestions of luxury and class. In fact, they promise warm, acrid champagne, industrial quantities of hors d’oeuvres and a sickly, hollow feeling at the end of the evening.
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