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Formal afternoon dress consists of a black cutaway coat with white piqué or black cloth waistcoat, and gray-and-black striped trousers. The coat may be bound with braid, or, even in better taste, plain. A satin-faced lapel is not conservative on a cutaway, but it is the correct facing for the more formal (and elderly) frock coat. Either a cutaway or a frock coat is always accompanied by a silk hat, and best worn with plain black waistcoat and a black bow tie or a black and white four-in-hand tie. A gray silk ascot worn with the frock coat is supposed to be the correct wedding garment of the bride's father.

 

Shoes may be patent leather, although black calf-skin are at present the fashion, either with or without spats. If with spats, be sure that they fit close; nothing is worse than a wrinkled spat or one that sticks out over the instep like the opened bill of a duck!

 

Though gray cutaway suits and gray top hats have always been worn to the races in England, they do not seem suitable here, as races in America are not such full-dress occasions as in France and England. But at a spring wedding or other formal occasions a sand-colored double-breasted linen waistcoat with spats and bow tie to match looks very well with a black cutaway and almost black trousers, on a man who is young.