There are three levels of evening “dressing up” in contemporary Western society:

* Hems that end mid-calf don’t look good on anyone, so the gray area is empty.

It often seems to be the case that the dress code specifies how men should dress and women take liberties. I think it should go the opposite way: the women choose what kind of dresses they will wear and the men dress to match. This seems particularly prudent for events like highschool “formals” where the organizers have no clue about specifying dress codes. Another example is a wedding: a traditional dress is a ball gown, so a matching groom wears white-tie for an evening wedding and morning dress for one during the day.

Given the small number of dressy events in modern society, most men don’t have dress up clothes. Therefore, events can be “black-tie optional”, which means wear em if you got em (highschool formals are a good example: wear em if you rent em). Personally, that strikes me as a way to make all of your guests a bit uncomfortable.

Another, better option is “creative black-tie”. This puts unusual pressure on men to be creative, but if they’re not and they just default to black-tie, they won’t stand out (precisely because men’s black-tie is designed to blend in). They also won’t stand out as much if they screw up black-tie, as almost everyone does these days (which kind of makes me wonder if I’m the one who’s wrong?).