Gentleman with mourning band, c. 1890-1910. https://digitaltmuseum.se/021017166611/1m16-a145229-1479
FASHIONS FOR MEN.
Correct Mourning Dress—Suitable Toilets for the Various Stages of Bereavement.
Special Correspondence of the Globe-Democrat.
New York, February 8. Dignified and decent mourning dress for a man does not permit the use of a black band on the sleeve of a tan-colored coat. The variety-loving city rounder may: be permitted to enjoy this indecorous means of publishing the loss of one both near and dear; but the well-dressed man and gentleman must array himself from top to toe in the proper trapping and suit of woe, or make no pretensions to mourning dress at all.
The complete outfit for the individual who has lost near relative, a parent, child, sister or brother or wife. is for business hours and for the morning a full suit of the roughest wool in black, the sacque coat, trousers and waist coat all from one piece of goods. With this white linen and a dull black silk tie in which no pin appears. As the waistcoat buttons high and the cravat spreads its folds amply, no bit of linen save the cuffs and collar appear, so that the shirt bosom, striped or sprigged or dotted with black, about which there is always an unpleasant tombstony suggestion, is wisely and thoroughly blotted out of sight and use.
Varnished boots are not permitted with this costume, a dull calf or dongola [leather similar to kid] with black cloth spats taking natural precedence of any other type of footwear. A gunmetal watch chain drawn straight across the waistcoat, cuff inks of the same material and gloves of black gazelle skin, denote a proper attention to small, significant details.
As for headgear. the black bowler or derby, as one may choose to call it is the approved roof and crown of things demonstrating the term medium in its proportions of crown and brim, lined with white satin and bearing black band from 2 ½ Inches to 2 ¾ inches in width.
Full afternoon dress for a man in mourning requires that the frock coat, trousers and waistcoat be cut from the same piece of black vicuna, or rather heavy unfinished worsted. and that the shoes be of leather enameled sufficiently to give only a slight luster. Black splatter dashes buttons over these, and the gloves are black glace kid fastened with two large black buttons. The top hat for such an outfit at the funeral may be bound with crepe. Thereafter; mourner’s cloth is the appropriate band and is worn widest for a wife. For a child or parent the top hat’s band should measure 2 3/4 inches.
Into the full-dress mourning suit a gleam of light may be cast by the scarf and pin, though for he funeral and first weeks afterward a cravat of silk as lusterless as the facing of the coat lapels and pierced by a dull black enameled pin paves the way to a cravat of black and gray brocade and an onyx pin touched with gold. In the brocade figures or stripes are equally acceptable, and one man of undoubted taste and knowledge in the niceties of dress wears in his tie a single pearl of modest size sunk in a gypsy setting of black enamel showing a hair line of gold. Another popular form is a bird’s claw of onyxed gold and dusky enamel holding a ball of onyx. A watch chain of gold links subdued with elaborate tracings of black enamel afford another relieving touch to prevailing gloom of the garments, and for sleeve links nothing takes precedence of thin long oval buttons of beautifully polished agate, the lustrous blackness of the stone traversed by misty blue white lines. Sunk In delicate gold bands and linked with gold, these are the acme of smartness and refinement.
No discussion of mourning could assume to be complete without reference to the handkerchief linen and the visiting card. The first should not be hemstitched in black and many men ridicule the notion, and with justification, that It is necessary, manly or seemly to carry with mourning dress other than a purely white muchoir. There is undeniably a number, however, who cling to the tradition of the mourning handkerchief and have in the .corners of their purely white linen squares a small oval or diamond of black linen set and on this the initials in chastely simple white embroidery done. Surely there is nothing conspicuous or effeminate in this device, as may be urged against the black border, and it serves perfectly to satisfy the conscientious qualms of those who love to do everything in decency and order.
A small bristol board slip, lightly bordered with black and bearing the name in heavy black letters or in old English is the carte de visite of the gentleman suffering a bereavement, and bill folder card case and cigarette holder should respectively be made, the two first of black seal, the latter of gun metal with the initials thereon lightly chased in gold.
Concerning evening dress for a man in mourning for the first month, nothing need be said, for he who respects his own grief and the conventions sufficiently to wear carefully considered mourning does not for at least four weeks appear at any function where evening dress is required. At home for dinner the costume necessary is that customarily worn, the waistcoat matching the trousers and short dinner coat, the tie of lusterless black silk, the sleeve links such as he wore with his afternoon dress and the shirt stud of white enamel: When the days of mourning are not chronologically completed, but healthy human nature turns nevertheless to social Intercourse and diversion, the long-tailed coat with the black waistcoat, tie and black gloves are worn to the theater and to dinners, while the simple enamel studs appear vastly more appropriate than the undertakerish effect of black enamel or even gray pearls that a few men have adopted. Better it will be to wear the more than ever popular white pearls than the ash gray ones that are costly and give too nearly an aspect of an ink spot or a finger mark on the immaculate linen.
It seems apropos here to make mention of some of the prices paid for the three pearl studs, without which no smart man’s evening toilet is fashionably complete. Sixty dollars is a just and generous price to pay for a trio of well-colored, perfectly spherical and properly proportioned gems, for $25 very good ones can be had, but as high as $600 per set has been paid several times this winter by men who scorn to wear any but absolutely perfect jewels.
BEAU BRUMMEL.
St. Louis [MO] Globe-Democrat 11 February 1900: p. 36
See this link for another look at what the Sad Man of Fashion is wearing in 1892.
Chris Woodyard is the author of A is for Arsenic: An ABC of Victorian Death, The Victorian Book of the Dead, The Ghost Wore Black, The Headless Horror, The Face in the Window, and the 7-volume Haunted Ohio series. She is also the chronicler of the adventures of that amiable murderess Mrs Daffodil in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales. The books are available in paperback and for Kindle. Indexes and fact sheets for all of these books may be found by searching hauntedohiobooks.com. Join her on FB at Haunted Ohio by Chris Woodyard or The Victorian Book of the Dead. And visit her newest blog, The Victorian Book of the Dead.
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