The smoking jacket: ideal for a celebration

I'd like to wish you all a Very Happy New Year. Whether you saw in the New Year lounging in front of the television or dressed up to celebrate over a good meal, I'm sure you did it in great style.

I enjoyed wearing this smoking jacket. Not strictly part of the black tie dress code, a smoking jacket is a fun alternative to the black or dark blue evening suit; perhaps slightly less conventional and therefore more for a party or less formal dinner. It has become increasingly popular in the last few years as men look for a wider range of choice in formal and evening wear. 

Bottle green velvet smoking jacket with frogging from Oliver Brown (right) 

From Victorian times, a velvet or silk coat would be worn by a chap to keep the smell of tobacco off his clothes. The smoking jacket generally has a shawl collar, turned-up cuffs, and frogging (ornamental braiding, often seen on military uniforms). It developed from the seventeenth century oriental dressing gown, which shared some of the same features but was generally longer.  

I've been wanting to try one for a while and am grateful to Oliver Brown for lending me one for the New Year's celebration. The bottle green jacket (illustrated above) is tailored from especially soft velvet, made from cotton milled in Yorkshire and has a canvassed construction, hand-crafted frogging at the buttons and cuffs, cord bordering the shawl collar and is finished with velvet-covered buttons. Available in regular and long fittings and other styles and colours, it's a beautiful coat. See Oliver Brown Evening Wear.