With the morning or lounge dress in winter is worn the Derby or soft-felt Alpine hat, called the Hombourg. The Derbies are black, brown, or drab, and the felts are gray, brown, drab, or black. The colored shirt with white standing or turned-down collar is the usual accompaniment to the lounge suit. The fashion for colored shirts in stripes has been that the patterns run up and down and not across the bosom. The tie is a four-in-hand or an Ascot, or a simple bow, the boots black leather or dark-brown russet, and the gloves of tan or gray undressed kid or of dogskin. For ordinary business wear, suits of black or gray mixed cheviot, vicuña or worsted, or fancy Scotch goods, the coat of which is a "cutaway," are also popular; but the black diagonal "cutaway" has passed entirely out of fashion, and is utilized at present in riding costume.
The lounge suit in summer is of blue flannel or very light cheviot or tweed. Straw hats are worn in place of Derbies and felts. Fashion sometimes dictates fancy waistcoats of linen to be worn with business suits; otherwise the entire costume—trousers, coat, and waistcoat—is of the same material.
In the country, at the seaside, or in communities where golf, wheeling, tennis, yachting or other sports and pastimes are the order of the day, the costumes appropriate for these are in vogue for lounge or morning suits. This is what the English call "mufti." Such costumes are, however, not in good form in the city.
Black leather, tan, or russet shoes are worn with morning dress. White duck or flannel trousers, with black or blue cheviot coat and waistcoat, make fashionable lounge suits for summer resorts.
Afternoon dress consists of a double-breasted frock coat of soft cheviot, vicuña, or diagonal worsted with either waistcoat to match—single-breasted or double-breasted—of fancy cloth, Marseilles duck or piqué; trousers of different material, usually cashmere, quiet in tone, with a striped pattern on a dark gray, drab, or blue background; boots of patent leather, buttoned, not tied; a white or colored shirt with straight standing white collar; a four-in-hand, puffed Ascot, or small club tie; silk hat and undressed gray, tan, or brown kid gloves. The colored shirt is an innovation, and it should be used sparingly, white linen on any semiformal function being in better form. When spats are used they should be of brown, gray, or drab cloth or canvas, to match the trousers as nearly as possible. Some ultra faddists wear white kid gloves with afternoon dress, but the fashion is not universal.
Afternoon dress, is the attire for weddings—for the bridegroom, best man, ushers, and male guests; at afternoon teas, afternoon receptions, afternoon calls, afternoon walks on the fashionable avenue, garden parties (but not picnics), luncheons, and, in fact, at all formal or semiformal functions taking place between midday and candlelight, as well as at church on Sundays, at funerals, and in the park in London after midday.
Gray frock-coat suits are recent introductions from London, and have been worn at all the functions at which the black is required, but the latter is more conservative and in better taste. The afternoon dress is seldom worn in midsummer, morning suits being allowable at seaside and mountain-resort day functions.
Evening dress is the proper attire, winter or summer, on all occasions after candlelight. There are two kinds of evening dress, formal and informal.
Formal or "full" evening dress, as it is sometimes vulgarly called, consists of the evening or "swallowtail" coat of black dress worsted or soft-faced vicuña, with or without silk or satin facing, with waistcoat and trousers of the same material, the latter plain or with a braid down the sides. The "dress" waistcoat can also be of white duck or piqué, in which case it is double-breasted. The shape of the dress waistcoat shows the shirt bosom in the form of a "U."
The evening shirt is of plain white linen, with two shirt buttons and link cuffs, straight standing collar, white lawn or linen tie. The gloves are white with white stitching, the hose of black silk, and the handkerchief, which must be present but not seen, of plain white linen. The shoes are patent-leather pumps or "low quarters," tied, not buttoned.