What's the Point of a Dress Code These Days?
Altitude, it seems, comes with attitude. The social life at places like Sugarbush and Gstaad is everything. As one rather grand lady I met at high tea in Badrutt’s Palace Hotel told me, “I simply don’t have time to go skiing when I’m here. There’s just too much else to do.” And what you look like while you’re engaged in all those off-the-slopes activities is every bit as critical as your skill on skis.
Which brings me to an invitation I received in St. Moritz this past February for the gala dinner to close proceedings at the Ice, a two-day event that featured impossibly valuable vintage motorcars, driven by impossibly rich owners, drifting sideways across the city’s frozen lake. It arrived with the instruction to dress in “Alpine Black Tie.” We live in an era when dress codes of any sort seem rather passé. So it was a shock to encounter a new and very specific one. For clarity, I asked my hosts what Alpine black tie actually means. Put simply, it’s black tie with an injection of traditional loden-wool Alpine jacket, or Alpen Jacke. In the daytime, if you’re a stickler, go with lederhosen. At night, throw on a Jacke and you’re good.
Except that at the event, most folks dressed in regular black tie, tux jackets and all. I wondered what the point of the dress code was in the first place. But then I recalled what those same folks wore around town and at the Ice itself: an unofficial but diligently adhered-to uniform. Lush knits. Luxe technical jackets. Lugged boots. The sorts of pieces that say “mountain” in no uncertain terms.
I glanced around the gala again, at the sea of tuxedos punctuated by the occasional turtleneck with a velvet dinner jacket. Even the one guy dressed in a red racing suit wore a crisp white shirt with a bow tie. Just as during the day, they looked not identical but of a kind with one another. And I realized that dress codes do have their purpose after all. If you interpret them right, they don’t serve to exclude you or anyone else but to make everyone look—and feel—like they belong.
Lead image: Timeless après-ski style at Sugarbush, Vermont, circa 1960.
From: Esquire
