Etiquette, the Stage and Fashion

Sorry, but this look is just way too retro. – “Men look to the stage for pointers on etiquette and manners, they have no use for stage fashions in dress. I have never known a style that first appeared on the stage, which was copied by any fashionable tailor or men's outfitter.”

The Stage, Men’s Manners and Men’s Fashions

“It’s queer,” said a Fifth Avenue tailor to a New York Sun man the other day, “that while men look to the stage for pointers on etiquette and manners, they have no use for stage fashions in dress. I have never known a style that first appeared on the stage, which was copied by any fashionable tailor or men's outfitter. 

“In the plays now running at several of the theaters are some very distinct innovations in masculine dress, but none of these novel ideas will ever be adopted by New Yorkers. The stage is a mirror of fashion for women only. Why this is so is more than I can explain. 

“Even in London, where men's fashions originate, stage clothes, no matter how faultless from an artistic point of view, are never copied by the tailors. “The fact is that the tailors have precious little discretion in the matter. Men would resent sartorial ideas that had been borrowed from the stage.” – San Francisco Call, 1905

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia