Rebel In A White Tuxedo

Rebel In A White Tuxedo
Sid Vicious went out in a blaze of ironic glory in the film ''The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle'' singing Sinatra's ''My Way'' wearing white tuxedo for this video shoot.

Malcolm McLaren says;

“He single-handedly reinvented the classic Havana tuxedo into an outlaw costume by styling it with a pair of black drainpipe jeans and what would become the ubiquitous Punk garter that he wore so sweetly around his left thigh.”

Sid wasn’t the first ‘outsider’ to sport an irreverent tux. The style of white/cream/ivory Tuxedo that Bogart wears in the movie, 'Casablanca,' is it the typical 'hour-glass' shape with high armpits & fitted waist that one associates with jackets of that era.

In the mid 70's Roxy Music's Bryan Ferry became the louche lounge lizard photographed posing by a pool in a white dinner jacket, for which he was seriously criticized by the rock press.

History Of The Tuxedo
James Brown-Potter, a New York coffee broker, visited England in the summer of 1886 and was introduced to the Prince of Wales at a Court ball. He and his wife Cora were invited to dinner at Sandringham and on enquiring with the Prince what he should wear was referred to the Prince’s tailor who made him a dinner jacket. When he returned to America he introduced the dinner jacket to his country club Tuxedo Park. When various people started wearing the new jacket it quickly became known as the tuxedo or tux and spread rapidly throughout American ‘polite society’.

The 1930’s, became the era when the tuxedo jacket reached a zenith of sartorial elegance. Humphrey Bogart popularized the white tux which he wore in the classic film Casablanca. The white dinner jacket is often worn in warm climates. It is usually ivory in color rather than pure white, and does not have silk-faced lapels. It is worn with exactly the same clothes as a normal jacket, except for the most formal variations (such as a winged collar). In the U.S. and Canada a white dinner jacket is traditionally worn only from Memorial Day in the spring to Labor Day. (This rule applies also to white summer clothes, including shoes and suits.) In the UK, the traditional rule is that white dinner jackets are never worn, even on the hottest day of summer, but are reserved for wear abroad. Some exceptions to these rules are, in America, its use in high-school proms, and in Britain some concerts, famously for instance the Last Night. In other tropical climates, such as in Imperial Burma, the less formal color was desert fawn.”