Quote Originally Posted by freddie View Post
I've never seen such a scruffy looking bunch in all my life, but these days it seems to be 'the norm'.
I'm unfortunately familiar with that.

Saturday night was my wife's office party. The theme was supposed to be "black and white," and attendees were to make our own masks and bring them for a contest.

My wife wore a very nice white pants suit, and I wore a SWK Nightstalker, black shirt w/French cuffs, cufflinks, black belt with buckle, semi-dress sporran in black leather with silver tassel bells and faux "silver" sealskin front and tassels, SWK Nightstalker flashes, charcoal hose (seeing a "black and silver" theme here?)

I knew ahead of time that some would be very much informal, so I took my black leather jacket with me and did not wear a tie. In that crowd, I didn't wear the jacket anyway.

One gentleman wore a tuxedo. There were a lot of men wearing untucked dress shirts over jeans, and a few buffoons who couldn't be troubled to remove their baseball hats indoors...

We won the mask contest. The prize was a nice little 1GB iPod Shuffle, and I managed to make their President/CEO laugh - he'd said, "I have to admire a man who can wear a kilt."

I replied, "Oh, it's not difficult. All you really need is a waist."

As for the T-shirts and jeans crowd... I've never felt uncomfortable being dressed more formally than those around me - the reverse is what makes me uncomfortable.