As a modern people, we generally don’t tend to dress in formal attire all that often. Weddings, funerals, and maybe the odd black tie charity event if you happen to be loaded. Dressing in black tie is an even scarcer occurrence while travelling. But in my opinion, that’s what makes it all the more fun. Imagine: you’ve just a had a day out in a shiny new city, you come back to your hotel and get all dolled up for an event that almost seems out of place on your itinerary.
When you know that you’ll have a formal night while travelling, packing can be a real nightmare. Not only are suits heavy and specialised, but I also don’t like the idea of it getting crushed in my bag to only wear once on the trip. But whenever I make the exception, it’s usually a highlight of the trip. Here are a few times I’ve suited up while on the road.
New Year’s Eve Cruise in the Caribbean
As you get older, the less exciting New Year’s Eve gets, right? Wrong. Take a cruise over New Year’s and you’ll have no choice but to have a good time. A couple of years ago my family all took a 10-day cruise in the Caribbean together and that happened to be over New Year’s.
Dinner on NYE was designated formal, so we decked out in our best and got cleaned up real nice. Often cruisers (and travellers in general) — usually men — like to let their beards run wild but the formal night on the cruise is the one time when the electric shaver and beard trimmer come out in full force. I mean, it’s all well and good to grow it out, but the birds nest on your face doesn’t exactly go with that tie. A male grooming product from Philips will help keep it under control.
We headed down to the restaurant for our usual 3-4 courses, went to a show in the ship’s theatre, then headed up to the top deck where a DJ was playing in the new year while partying passengers danced around the pools only multiple levels. It was a really cool atmosphere, and one you could only ever have on NYE. I mean, when else are you going to have hundreds of passengers up at midnight, dancing in the wind as the ship sails to its first destination AND we are due to disembark in about 8 hours? Yet the atmosphere was totally carefree and as the clock struck midnight, the pools suddenly filled.
Leeds Summer Ball
When I moved to England for a semester studying abroad, I packed pretty light; I took over a single suitcase and that was plenty for 99% of situations. When the end of the semester came, the end of year party was a festival held in the outskirts of Leeds in the UK headlined by Florence + the Machine.
The event was also designated black tie. It was incredible contrast of a celebratory outdoor festival with formal dress. However, I did not pack a suit for my 6 months, and as a fairly poor student who wanted to spend the majority of his money travelling through Europe starting from the day after, I did not intend to spend up on an expensive suit (or even a reasonably priced suit). So my buddies and I headed down to the local Primark and bought a suit for £35.
The suit did its job perfectly, and with a little male grooming, we actually cleaned up pretty well. If you didn’t look too closely you couldn’t tell the suit was dirt cheap (or maybe you could, I don’t know). There were carnival rides like the slingshot and sideshow games, one of which I, in my black leather shoes, tried to kick a football into one of one 6 holes. I blame the shoes but I failed miserably.
There were, of course, various drinks tents but the biggest contrast of the night was going to the bathroom in a porta-loo in full formal gear. It was a real interesting event. Florence was of course the highlight and was a perfect way to ring in the end of our semester there, since her then new album Lungs was practically our soundtrack for the past 6 months. And then at 6am that morning, still dressed in our suits, me and 3 others boarded a plane to start a month travelling Europe. It was a perfect goodbye.
Captain’s dinner on my Europe Cruise
A few weeks later, I had my first cruise experience. I had sent a lot of my clothes home but the suit made it in (because I went straight from Summer Ball to the plane). This turned out to be perfect because little did I know that because cruises are a somewhat luxury experience, formal dinners are semi-regular. One particular formal night was the Captain’s Dinner, where all passengers are invited into one of the theatres and the captain and his crew are introduced to everyone on board (or at least everyone in attendance).
My travelling pal, Emily, and I really only attended because it was the only time on board the ship was actually giving out free alcohol — welcome champagne — and even though I don’t like champagne, I refer to my previous comments about being on a very tight budget at the time.
Houston Ballet
You might not know this, but my brother is a professional ballet dancer with the Houston Ballet Company. It’s awesome, right? One of the few people I know who started doing something at age 6 and is now paid to do it as a job. Anyway, he lives there and my family all live here so a couple of years ago we went over to visit for Christmas. (It was a bit of fail in that we traveled all the way to the USA from Australia and we still ended having up having shorts weather for Christmas — but you can’t win them all). Anyway, Christmas for a ballet company means only one thing: The Nutcracker.
One evening, a few nights before Christmas we all got dressed up in our formal gear, I dropped my 1-year-old son off at a complete stranger’s house for the evening, and we headed out to the theatre. Even though my bro has done ballet for close to 15 years, I still know very little about it, but I can appreciate that what these people can do with their bodies is pretty spectacular. I may miss the intricacies of their technique, but I recognise feats of strength and balance when I see them.
Masquerade Ball at Grosvenor Casino, Leeds
This is a funny one, because, remember before when I was all like, “going to formal events while travelling is awesome” (to paraphrase). Well in about the second month of my time in Leeds when I didn’t have a suit (with me in the UK), my friends and I were invited to a Masquerade Ball at the local casino.
It sounded like a lot of fun (we were wrong) but none of us had anything to wear. Let’s just say we did the best with what we had. To quote my own travel journal: “None of us (guys) really had anything “ball-y” to wear but we improvised pretty well. Jeans and a tie is a good look right?” And for some reason, I actually had a vest in my suitcase, so I guess that helped a little. Didn’t it? Guys?
For the life of me, I can’t actually remember what actually happened at the event. But from memory the night mostly consisted of playing drinking games, throwing hard candies into a large vase, and heading downstairs to play the casino games.
Oh and did I mention I wore a Batman mask? Yeah. I was pretty dapper.
This article has turned out very different to how I imagined it would look. It turns out, by no big surprise, that when you either travel on a budget or travel somewhat lightly, you are forced to improvise. Sometimes you’ll look ridiculous; sometimes you’ll look ridiculously awesome. But every time you’ll have fun and it will be a memorable night. Remember, when suiting up on the road, it’s not what you wore that’ll be important, but how you wore it.
P.S. Just to set the record straight. I have since learned how to wear a suit well, and this is how I rock one today. Technically, I could have included this as well, since it was taken at a wedding that I travelled to. But since it was still in the same state (despite being 6 hours away) I’ve kept it as an honourable mention.
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