The orange tuxedo: Dumb and Dumber and the worst formalwear on film

Some outfits are bad. Some are so completely, confidently wrong that they become a costume people deliberately wear every Halloween for thirty years. Lloyd and Harry’s tuxedos in Dumb and Dumber (1994) are the second kind.

The pair turn up at a charity gala in Aspen, Lloyd (Jim Carrey) in bright orange and Harry (Jeff Daniels) in powder blue, each with a ruffled shirt, a matching top hat and a cane. They walk into a room full of black tie believing they are the best-dressed men there. It is the most joyful fashion disaster in film.

Let us take it apart properly anyway.

What went wrong, piece by piece

The colour. Black tie means black, midnight blue or, in hot weather, ivory. A tuxedo is formal precisely because it is sober. Orange and powder blue say prom, 1976, rented at a discount.

The ruffles. A ruffled shirt front had its moment in the 1970s and has been a punchline ever since. A dress shirt for black tie is white, with a pleated or plain bib front.

The top hat. This is the subtle one, and the funniest to a tailor. A top hat belongs to white tie and morning dress, the two formal codes above black tie. Wearing one with a dinner jacket mixes two dress codes that were never meant to meet.

The matching accessories. Hat, jacket and cane all in the same loud colour turns an outfit into a uniform, and not a good one.

The fit. Both jackets were chosen for the colour and nothing else, and it shows at the shoulders.

Where colour at black tie actually works

The film’s instinct is not entirely wrong. Men do want some colour at formal events, and there is a right way to have it: one piece, rich and dark, with everything else black.

• A velvet dinner jacket in oxblood, bottle green or midnight blue, worn with black evening trousers, a white shirt and a black bow tie. It is warm, it is unmistakably formal, and it is the one coloured jacket that looks better at night than in the day.
• An ivory dinner jacket in summer, as Bogart wore in Casablanca.
• Colour in the small things: a pocket square, the lining you see when the jacket opens.

What never works is colour on colour on colour. Pick one.

Getting it made

Sam makes tuxedos and dinner jackets to your measurements at the Vaughan studio. If you want the Lloyd energy without the Lloyd result, sketch an oxblood velvet dinner jacket with a shawl lapel: draw it. The Drawing Board draws matching trousers; wear black ones. Black tie decoded has the rest of the code.

Where the scene is described: MensUSA on the two tuxedos.