The smoking jacket: ideal for a celebration

I'd like to wish you all a Very Happy New Year. Whether you saw in the New Year lounging in front of the television or dressed up to celebrate over a good meal, I'm sure you did it in great style.

I enjoyed wearing this smoking jacket. Not strictly part of the black tie dress code, a smoking jacket is a fun alternative to the black or dark blue evening suit; perhaps slightly less conventional and therefore more for a party or less formal dinner. It has become increasingly popular in the last few years as men look for a wider range of choice in formal and evening wear. 

Bottle green velvet smoking jacket with frogging from Oliver Brown (right) 

From Victorian times, a velvet or silk coat would be worn by a chap to keep the smell of tobacco off his clothes. The smoking jacket generally has a shawl collar, turned-up cuffs, and frogging (ornamental braiding, often seen on military uniforms). It developed from the seventeenth century oriental dressing gown, which shared some of the same features but was generally longer.  

I've been wanting to try one for a while and am grateful to Oliver Brown for lending me one for the New Year's celebration. The bottle green jacket (illustrated above) is tailored from especially soft velvet, made from cotton milled in Yorkshire and has a canvassed construction, hand-crafted frogging at the buttons and cuffs, cord bordering the shawl collar and is finished with velvet-covered buttons. Available in regular and long fittings and other styles and colours, it's a beautiful coat. See Oliver Brown Evening Wear.

The glorious return of the smoking jacket

I've been to two menswear two shops this week and both report the comeback of the smoking jacket for younger, middle-aged and older men of style. Once worn by fashionable Victorian and Edwardian gentleman on retiring from the dinner table for a game of billiards or a smoke and a brandy (or a good lounge, see Oscar Wilde below), this often colourful and always comfortable coat is being worn again - finding use either as a dinner jacket, something to go clubbing in, or simply to stylishly slouch in at home.

Both Ede & Ravenscroft and Oliver Brown, the shops I visited, stock them. Both sell smoking jackets off the peg and bespoke. I liked the brighter coloured velvets, but a deep midnight blue (at Oliver Brown) looks stunning. A plain satin collar makes the coat more of a dinner jacket in style, while elaborate frogging (braiding) is also available for the more extrovert. See also smoking hats below.

Smoking jacket, Ede & Ravenscroft

This bright red jacket is a copy of one made bespoke for a client of Ede & Ravenscroft - they liked it so much they made a copy for their Savile Row shop. Increased sales are reported by both Ede & Ravenscroft and Oliver Brown.

Oliver Brown

Oliver Brown

I remember my grandfather (who called himself one of the last Victorians; he was born in 1901) owned a round, tasselled smoking hat. These round velvet creations, often elaborately embroidered, came in as wide a range of colours, possibly to match the owner's smoking jacket. Vintage examples can still be found, or try eBay for modern versions.