THE WHITE TIE DINNER

The White Tie Dinner is the Court’s formal dinner of the year, one evening in late October in a private room in New York taken for the night: white tie, one table, the plan settled a fortnight ahead, decorations worn if held, and the courses fixed. No guests are brought.

It exists to keep, once a year, what Debrett’s calls “the most formal event code, and the rarest”.

Full Evening Dress

White tie began late in the eighteenth century. After the French Revolution, men of society took to “more austere cutaway dress coats in dark colours”, perhaps after the riding coats of country gentlemen. Beau Brummell wore a dark blue tailcoat and a white waistcoat, and by the 1840s black and white had become the standard colours. The dinner jacket came in the 1880s, “as a less formal and more comfortable alternative”: in October 1886, at the first Autumn Ball of the Tuxedo Club, in Tuxedo Park, New York, Griswold Lorillard and his friends wore “a tailless dress coat”, and the tuxedo took its name from the place. In 1922 Emily Post held tails “necessary only at balls, formal dinners, and in a box at the opera”. After the First World War white tie was, in one magazine’s words, “almost abandoned”. Kennedy wore it to his inaugural ball in 1961, the last president to do so.

Debrett’s describes it: “a black single-breasted tailcoat, with silk lapels, worn unbuttoned”, trousers “with two lines of braid”, and a shirt “fastened with studs not buttons, with a detachable wing collar and a thin white bow tie”. The waistcoat is white piqué, and should not show below the front of the coat; in GQ’s phrase, “you should only ever see black and white not black, white and black again.” Women wear full-length ball or evening gowns, with evening gloves and, if they choose, tiaras. Such an evening, Debrett’s adds, is “inevitably announced on an elaborate invitation several weeks before the event”.

“White tie, decorations” on an invitation “is a precise instruction”: those who hold honours wear them, breast stars on the left breast, neck badges beneath the bow tie, miniatures in a row above the breast pocket, and the insignia of hereditary societies such as the Cincinnati count among them. Those who hold none wear plain white tie, and “do not invent decorations to wear”. In doubt, “A tasteful absence is always preferable to a questionable presence.”

New York still keeps a few white tie evenings. The Al Smith Dinner, founded by Cardinal Spellman in 1945, is held by the Archbishop of New York on the third Thursday of October; on 15 October 2026 it is held for the eighty-first time, at the Waldorf Astoria, hosted for the first time by Archbishop Ronald A. Hicks. The Viennese Opera Ball, founded in 1955, held its seventieth on 8 May 2026 at Cipriani 42nd Street, with “white tie and tails for gentlemen, long ball gowns for ladies”, and closed with the midnight Quadrille. The International Debutante Ball has been held in New York every two years since 1954.

The Evening

One evening in late October, in a private room in New York taken for the night. The Court keeps no house of its own.

One table.

The plan is settled a fortnight ahead.

The courses are fixed.

Decorations are worn by those who hold them.

What Is Asked

White tie: a black tailcoat, a white piqué waistcoat, a white bow tie on a wing collar, and trousers with two lines of braid; for women, full-length evening gowns and evening gloves.

Decorations if held. Those who hold none wear none.

No guests are brought.

Nobody is pitched at the table.

The Places

The number of places and the sum are stated in the invitation.

The Court’s Oyster and Champagne Evening is held at the beginning of the month.

How one becomes a member is set out under Admission.