Etiquetteer really can’t predict what will provoke a reaction, and was a bit surprised to hear from a few readers after the recent column on gloves:
Dear Etiquetteer:
Tut, tut, white kid gloves never look clean for more than a few minutes. Much better to wear black gloves and be a fashionable ghoul. Could black gloves still look elegant if they are worn while a person is garbed in a ratty tee shirt and trimming an aggressive and thorny shrub?
Dear Ghoulish:
An Instagram reader made a similar comment, recalling that gloves used to get dirty so quickly because in older days a layer of coal soot covered everything. Etiquetteer thinks it’s quite possible that that’s the reason old etiquette and household books put such an emphasis on spotless white linen. It was so difficult to achieve!
Black gloves may, of course, be Perfectly Proper without being at all ghoulish. Ghoulishness defines Morticia Addams and the Marchesa Casati, for instance. But Holly Golightly . . . now she was severely stylish and lively. The only problem with black gloves is that dirt appears white on them.
As to your latter query, Etiquetteer can’t consider that gardening gloves are ever Perfectly Proper in black.
Dear Etiquetteer:
My mother always wore white gloves and I think they're very elegant. I wish they would come back. As for myself I always wanted those leather gloves the cowboys wore in the movies. I thought they were very macho, although there was no such word as macho at the time. Maybe better to say they were cool although cool also wasn't a word in those days.
Dear Cowboy:
Those heavily fringed gauntlet gloves that Buffalo Bill and the rodeo cowboys wore were indeed cool! Your message reminded Etiquetteer of the midcentury vogue for cowboys and little boys and girls out in public with their cowboy hats. But they wouldn’t quite look Perfectly Proper with a bow tie . . .
But Etiquetteer was most surprised with challenges to the old dictum that it is better to be underdressed than overdressed. Both these readers make discerning points that require some clarification.
Dear Etiquetteer:
You have frequently stated that it is more proper to be underdressed than overdressed, but my dear mother has always asserted that when in doubt, dress more formally, as it makes others think that you have somewhere more interesting to go afterwards.
Dear Overdressing:
Your mother is quite correct that, when going on to a more formal function after a less formal one, one dresses for the later function. Etiquetteer will never forget an occasion over 25 years ago when a business-casual after-work mixer suddenly included a gentleman in white tie. He let everyone know he had something else immediately following - perhaps a little too insistently.
But Etiquetteer almost has a little tear in his eye, thinking about the guests at the party your overdressed mother is leaving, worried that they might think themselves too insignificant to compel her interest or, worse, muttering “Well! She certainly thinks she’s too good for us!” That’s not the sort of after-party impression one wants to leave. But as in all things, it’s how it’s done. One can be a Provoking Parvenu or a Lady of Mystery.
Dear Etiquetteer:
I beg to differ about the degree of impropriety contingent upon overdressing. Does Etiquetteer really think it would be less of an affront to show up at a reception for, say, the Governor General of Canada in jeans, t-shirt, and scuffed cowboy boots rather than morning dress? (Given that others would be in regular daytime business attire.) I believe that I speak for many of us who do nor regard wearing a tie as "dressing up" but rather as dressing. I conclude by invoking the spirit of Lucius Beebe who only wore soft-crowned hats west of the Continental Divide, save for his final San Francisco sojourn.
Dear Discerning:
Etiquetteer never for one moment suggested that dressing beneath the established dress code for an event was Perfectly Proper, as you seem to imply. No indeed! The whole point of “It’s better to be underdressed than overdressed” is a guide against ostentation, not an absence of a Sense of Occasion.
Your message, and the one above it, prompted Etiquetteer to go search for “chapter and verse” on this bit of Personal Presentation Wisdom. Throughout Etiquetteer kept hearing the phrase “When choosing between velvet and wool, choose the wool.” Where did Young Etiquetteer read that?! It wasn’t in Judith Keith’s madcap I Haven’t a Thing to Wear. It wasn’t in Frances Bruce Strain’s Love at the Threshold. It wasn’t in I Try to Behave Myself: Peg Bracken’s Etiquette Book. Etiquetteer finally had to go back to the Pure Milk of the Word: Dear Mother’s copy of the 1950 Etiquette by Emily Post Herself. Right there on page 464, in a section headed “When in Doubt,” Emily keeps it simple: “When in doubt, wear the plainer dress. If you don’t know whether to put on a ball dress or a dinner dress, wear the dinner dress; or whether to wear wool or velvet to a lunch party, wear the wool.*”
She also references Beau Brummell’s having said “When one attracted too much notice, he could be sure of being not well dressed but over-dressed.” Search for that phrase in an internet search engine and you only get references to Mrs. Post, not Brummell. One relevant Brummell quote: “To be elegant one should not be noticed.” And another: “If people turn to look at you in the street, you are not well dressed, but either too stiff, too tight, or too fashionable.” Perhaps Emily conflated them.
So, dear readers, are you going to go up against both Emily and Beau? Etiquetteer doesn’t have the courage, thank you very much.
*From Etiquette by Emily Post, 1950. Used without permission.