Washington still has occasions that ask a man to dress for them. The White House Correspondents’ Dinner. The Gridiron. Kennedy Center Honors. Embassy galas, state dinners, the wedding where the invitation actually means black tie. We build the tuxedos, dinner jackets, and formal pieces that show up to those evenings, cut to the client, made from the right cloth, finished the way a tuxedo should be finished.
The Tuxedo
A custom tuxedo is not a black suit with shiny lapels. The cloth is different, the construction is different, and every detail has a reason. We build ours in true black or midnight blue, which under most evening light actually reads blacker than black. Lapels are your choice: peak for the classic, more commanding line; shawl for a softer, dinner-jacket feel. Both are faced in silk satin or grosgrain, matched at the trouser stripe and the covered buttons.
Construction starts at half-canvas, a hand-stitched canvas chest piece that lets the jacket mold to the body over time rather than collapse around it. Trousers have no belt loops, by design: side adjusters or suspender buttons, satin or grosgrain stripe down the outseam, a clean break over the shoe. The shirt sits inside it. The bow tie sits above it. Everything in the kit is built to the same standard.
The Choices, Drawn
A tuxedo is not something most men order often, so nobody expects you to arrive knowing the vocabulary. These are the decisions that shape the jacket. We walk through each one with you at the consultation.
Peak lapel
The lapel points up toward the shoulder. The classic black tie lapel, and the more commanding line.
Shawl lapel
One continuous curve with no notch and no point. Softer, with a dinner jacket feel.
One button, jetted pockets
A dinner jacket closes with a single button. The pockets are jetted: a clean slit with no flap, so nothing interrupts the front.
Side vents
A vent at each side of the back. The jacket moves with you when you sit or reach for a pocket.
No vent
A closed back. The most traditional choice for black tie, and the cleanest line when you are standing.
The shaded area on each lapel is the silk facing. The drawings are guides. Lapel width, button stance and pocket position are all set to you.
Satin or Grosgrain
The silk on the lapel is what separates a dinner jacket from a suit. It comes from the smoking jacket of the 1860s, which is where the dinner jacket began, and it has come in two forms ever since. Both are silk. The difference is the weave.
Satin
Satin is woven so the threads float across the surface, which leaves it smooth and bright. It catches the light. This is the lapel most men picture when they think of a tuxedo, and it is far more common, particularly in America. Against a matte black wool it gives the jacket its contrast.
Grosgrain
Grosgrain is woven with a heavier thread running across the cloth, which raises a fine rib. The name is French for coarse grain. It is matte, so the lapel reads as texture instead of shine, and it has long been the choice of English tailoring. You generally find it on higher end garments and on European makes. Men who find satin a little loud tend to land here.
Whichever you choose, the rest follows it. The trouser stripe, the covered buttons, and the bow tie should all be the same silk as the lapel.
Pricing
Custom tuxedos start at $1,095 in half-canvas construction with our house wool, a real tuxedo, properly built, at a price most men associate with off-the-rack. From there, you can upgrade either the construction or the cloth, independently.
To be clear on the two prices: $895 is the entry point for a custom suit, not a tuxedo. A tuxedo starts at $1,095, and the difference is the silk. A tuxedo carries satin or grosgrain on the lapels, on the piping of the pockets, on the buttons and down the trouser stripe, and that silk costs more than the cloth it sits on. That is why a tuxedo costs more than a normal suit.
Most clients land somewhere in the middle (full canvas in a midnight wool from one of those mills) and end up with a tuxedo that holds its shape for a decade of events.
Full canvas, with the handwork carried through the coat. The lapels are padded by hand, the collar is attached by hand, and the buttonholes, inner shoulder seams, side seams, chest pocket and lining are hand sewn. Pick stitching runs along the edges and seams.
Our highest grade. The coat is made by hand throughout, and the lapel work goes far beyond our fully handmade coat: many more rows of finer pad stitches, set while the lapel is held in its roll. That is what gives a lapel its life and lets the coat sit like a second skin.
Loro Piana, Holland & Sherry, Zegna, Scabal, Dormeuil, Stylbiella
We recommend beginning about twelve weeks before the event.
The tuxedo is the easy part. What you wear with it is where most men get it wrong.
Beyond the Tuxedo
A tuxedo is one answer. There are others. We build dinner jackets in midnight blue, ivory, deep burgundy, and black-on-black jacquards for the man who already owns a tuxedo and wants something with a little more voice. We make formal trousers as separates, for clients who own a jacket they love and need the bottoms to match again.
The formal shirt matters more than people realize. A pleated front is the traditional read; a Marcella (piqué) front is the older, more refined one: heavier, structured, the version a tuxedo was originally built around. We cut both, in two-ply Italian cotton, with the studs and cufflinks the shirt requires.
Bow ties are made to the suit. Batwing for clean and quiet. Butterfly for proportion under a peak lapel. Self-tied, always. A pre-tied bow tie is the one detail every photograph will catch.
The Washington Black-Tie Calendar
A real reason this work exists in this city: Washington has more nights that require black tie than almost any other city in America. Our clients dress for them year after year.
If you’re dressing for one of these, build the tuxedo for it now, not the week of. A first fitting, proper alterations, and finished delivery take planning; we recommend beginning about twelve weeks before the event. We schedule around the calendar.
Two of those evenings, the Gridiron and the Alfalfa, are white tie rather than black tie. That is a different garment (a tailcoat, not a tuxedo) and a stricter set of rules. We wrote the full guide to it here: White Tie in Washington.
Every photograph on this site is a real client wearing a garment we made for him.
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