Black tie is a dress code for semi-formal evening events, and is worn to many types of social functions. For a man, the major component is a jacket, known as a dinner jacket (British) or tuxedo (Canada and the U.S.), which is usually black but is also seen in midnight blue. A woman's corresponding evening dress ranges from a conservative cocktail dress to the long evening gown, determined by current fashion, local custom, and the occasion's time.

The term tuxedo is itself variously used in different parts of the world. It always refers to some form of dinner jacket, and sees most use in North America, where the term originated. There, it is commonly taken to mean a modern variation on the traditional black tie, while in Britain, it is sometimes used to refer to the white jacket alternative.

History

Black tie dates from 1860, when Henry Poole & Co. (Savile Row's founders), created a short smoking jacket for the then Prince of Wales (later Edward VII of the United Kingdom) to wear to informal dinner parties as an alternative to white tie, the standard formal dress. At that time, lounge suits were starting to be worn in the country, and the new dress code was an evening lounge suit intended for use in a relaxed atmosphere out of town. According to sartorial legend, in the spring of 1886, because the Prince liked Cora Potter, he invited her husband, James Potter, a rich New Yorker, to Sandringham House, his Norfolk hunting estate. When Potter asked the Prince's dinner dress recommendation, he sent Potter to Henry Poole & Co., in London. On returning to New York in 1886, Potter's dinner suit proved popular at the Tuxedo Park Club; the club men copied him, soon making it their informal dining uniform. The evening dress for men now popularly known as a tuxedo takes its name from Tuxedo Park, where it was said to have been worn for the first time in the United States, by Griswald Lorillard at the annual Autumn Ball of the Tuxedo Club founded by Pierre Lorillard IV, and thereafter became popular for formal dress in America. It became known as the tuxedo when a fellow asked another at the Autumn Ball, "Why does that man's jacket not have coattails on it?" The other answered, "He is from Tuxedo Park." The first gentleman misinterpreted and told all of his friends that he saw a man wearing a jacket without coattails called a tuxedo, not from Tuxedo. This all took place at The Autumn ball, which still exists today.

While the Americans initially called the new garment a tuxedo, the term has since been inaccurately used, particularly in America, to denote any form of formal or semi-formal dress including white tie, morning dress, and strollers. Two years later, it gained the name dinner jacket in Britain, a name it has also kept in the North-Eastern U.S.