THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, February 28, 1996 TAG: 9602280380
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: GUY FRIDDELL
LENGTH: Medium: 58 lines
Frank Sinatra advises in Esquire magazine how to live and love, including how to dress in black tie.
``For me,'' he confides, ``a tuxedo is a way of life.''
For me, too, for a hectic hour or so, 1.4 times a year.
Here is Sinatra's dress code:
``My basic rules are to have shirt cuffs extended half an inch from the jacket sleeve. Trousers should break just above the shoe. Try not to sit down, because it wrinkles the pants. If you have to sit down, don't cross your legs. Pocket handkerchiefs are optional, but I always wear one, usually orange, since orange is my favorite color. Shine your Mary Janes on the underside of a couch cushion.''
He's dead right about not sitting down, even if one is wearing only one's Sunday suit, much less a tux.
Try to sit about an inch and a half above the chair or sofa, a feat of levitation induced by going into a deep trance. Not only does it save the crease, but the pants seat also won't wear out as fast.
Sinatra probably owns a tux. His very own. To buy one is wise, an idea that occurs to me 45 minutes before time to put it on, too late to rent one either.
Lurking in a closet is an old-fashioned tux handed down years ago by my father-in-law. On me, it drapes as if any minute it is going to fall off, or apart, but it is black, which suffices.
True, youths spend more dressing for a high school prom than Sinatra does for Broadway. They wear tuxedos run up on a rainbow and look like drum majors. For a foxy grandpa to go so bedecked would be fit only for the end ring of a circus with the other clowns.
White shirts are derigueur. Mine's faded blue, a hue so obsolete guests murmur, ``Who's the gauche one in blue?'' But a ruffle down the shirt front hides what are buttons instead of studs. The cuffs are secured by safety pins, when they can be found. More often, hurrying, one stuffs the cuffs up one's jacket sleeves. Soon they extrude as with the off-handed flourish of a Restoration fop. Bow ties flap away bat-like. A neighbor offers one, string or clip-on. I take the latter.
Sinatra's reference to Mary Janes, a little girl's buckle shoe, is a nostalgic touch, a nonchalant blend with younger generations.
Face it, mine is an antic figure but most revelers are too transported with their own attire to notice yours. And if they break up in laughter at the rumpled apparition, then to occasion merriment is nothing to rue in a world so full of woe.
In a wedding with young ones dancing amid art in the Chrysler Museum's great court, I sidled inside, moving between pillars and around the jamming band, intent only on catching the shining bride's eye, to let her know I cared - and did.
When she started toward me, open-faced, laughing, I fled, taking care not to leave my Mary Jane on the wide, slate-tiled front steps. by CNB