Doublet Idea... am I off my rocker or on to something?

[Teufel Hunden]

Er, yeah... it looks good, but there are a couple of teensie-weensie problems with white jackets.

1) They show every smudge and stain, and that includes red wine, sauces, and gravy.

2) After dry cleaning they may look dingy, or possibly yellow.

I was counting on having to be extra careful to preserve it over a black jacket. It's not an easy feat, but my uncle's dress whites still looked stunning after nearly a decade of use.

As a practical matter, I think the contrasting facings help the problem of a white shirt with a white jacket. The other way around that is to have the jacket made in something like "winter white" or cream color and be sure your shirt is blazing chalk white. It might also make the jacket a little easier to keep clean, though nothing beats bleaching white cotton.

I agree with all of this.

If you are going to invest your own time and energy into making this thing, why not start with a cotton chef's jacket and see how you like the general look?

I'm getting my black montrose refitted before my wedding this year, and afterward I was going to take a dozen or so pictures, then commission my artist friend to create a photo-realistic rendering of what it would really look like. But a chef's jacket would be cheap and easy to get a hold of as well.

I like the idea, but am not sure where you'd wear it. I have seen ads that suggest really cool guys wear white dinner jackets all winter long in Bermuda and Palm Beach- and maybe Cairo. I wouldn't know.

3) White civilian dinner jackets (as opposed to military uniforms) are normally worn only in late spring and summer, and most Scottish dinners and balls seem to be held in fall or winter.

This actually was my lingering question about the whole idea, as I wasn't intending this to be warm-weather only attire at all. I wonder how many people would see that at say, the Tartan Ball in Washington DC, and think, "Nice doublet.... awfully cold out for that isn't it?"

I was hoping simply by virtue of this being a doublet coupled with a very nice tartan, and not just a typical dinner jacket, I could slide by without it being a faux pas. I'm trying to imagine this situation in my head, and while I certainly WOULD think someone odd for wearing a plain white dinner jacket in the middle of winter, I can't work out how a different piece of attire would fit into the same area.

I like the idea in principle, but as MoR pointed out, there are some issues. The montrose on a fit individual cannot be beat for 'dash'.
Perhaps another very striking, but non-white colour... A sky blue velvet with a deep claret or sanguine red lining?

I'll experiment around with different colors... sky blue with sanguine sounds pretty nice. Only thing I really wanted to avoid was the typical execution we see all the time: Black, Rifle Green...etc. But there's no reason it has to be white..

As an aside, I cannot see a white mess jacket now without being reminded of Jeeves and Wooster, where Jeeves continually belittles Bertie's white mess jacket and tries to guarantee it's demise/departure/non-presence.

ith:

HA! Funny you mentioned that, a friend of mine said the exact same thing.