DRESS CODES

six lines that turn up on an invitation, and what each one actually asks for — after Debrett’s

Built as a memo rather than a table: the thing worth hanging it up for reads across the room, with the full reference in smaller type below it.

Three sizes in one archive — from a sheet on the fridge to a poster on the wall.

Formats: A4 · A3 · A2
What you get: Print-ready PDFs, one per size, with every letterform converted to outlines — nothing to install, nothing to shift.
Subject: body and care · everyone · reference · study

The requirements follow the Debrett’s guide to etiquette. Evening and daytime codes are two separate ladders: morning dress is not «between» white tie and black tie, it is worn by day.

THE DINNER JACKET WAS INVENTED IN ORDER NOT TO DRESS UP

Black tie is today the most formal dress code most people will ever meet. It began as a relaxation: in 1865 the Savile Row tailors Henry Poole made the twenty-four-year-old Prince of Wales, the future Edward VII, a short tailless evening coat so that he need not put on white tie for private dinners at Sandringham.

The cloth stayed the same as the tailcoat, the lapels stayed silk-faced; only the tails went. It was a tailcoat with everything removed that made an evening a ceremony.

A guest of the Prince then carried it to America: in 1886 James Brown Potter wore it at the club in Tuxedo Park, north of New York. The British still say «dinner jacket» and the Americans «tuxedo», and both words name the same relaxed version of the tailcoat.

On the sheet

The requirements follow the Debrett’s guide to etiquette. Evening and daytime codes are two separate ladders: morning dress is not «between» white tie and black tie, it is worn by day.
Colour carries meaning, but meaning never rests on colour alone — the sheet reads in black and white.
Nothing about how it was made: the sheet carries only what the reader needs.

Printing

Three sizes in the archive: A4 — 210×297 mm, A3 — 297×420 mm, A2 — 420×594 mm.
All text is converted to outlines. No fonts to install, and nothing shifts on another machine.
White background and sparing fills — it prints on a home printer without draining the cartridge.
Margins of at least 10 mm: a home printer cannot print to the edge.
No stroke thinner than 0.3 mm, so nothing disappears in print.

Why the numbers can be trusted. Every countable number here is computed from data rather than typed in, and the sheet must pass 7 independent checks before it is allowed to build — how many items there are, the order they come in, and the claim in the highlighted box itself. If one fails, there is no file.

DRESS CODES

THE DINNER JACKET WAS INVENTED IN ORDER NOT TO DRESS UP

On the sheet

Printing

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