I went to three different parties last week where someone arrived grotesquely overdressed. On Sunday afternoon I was at a mate’s house in Didsbury for drinks in the garden with about fifteen people. We were milling around in jeans and jumpers, eating charcoal-coated burgers from the too-small barbecue sheltering under umbrellas from the midday drizzle when a man arrived wearing, it has to be said, a full suit and tie.
Three-piece suit. Tie clip. Pocket square.
Thought I was about to see Jimmy Hook’s dad waltz into the wrong party. Turned out he was American.
The point is, someone always turns up dressed like they shouldn’t be there.
Weddings, birthdays, dinners, christenings – I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve rocked up to a social gathering in the UK only to realise I’m either overdressed or underdressed compared to everyone else. British social etiquette demands we wear specific outfits for specific occasions but provides us no guideposts for decoding what those occasions’ specific outfits might be. If the Brits have one national skill, it’s knowing how to dress for an occasion.
We pride ourselves on having a sophisticated tradition of dress norms vaguely descended from those of our Continental neighbours but with added levels of flexibility and nuance that make them uniquely British. I love putting on trousers as much as the next person but frankly, it shouldn’t be this hard to know what to wear when you’re invited round to someone’s house. Which is why I’m writing this.
To bring you, dear reader, my insider guide to navigating the perilous waters of British private-dress occasions. Here is everything you’ll need to know about what to wear where, gleaned from fifteen years of trial and considerable error. Let’s do this.
British house parties The hardest British “dress code” to crack, ironically enough, might be the ubiquitous British house party. On the surface, it should be simple: you get invited to someone’s house to drink, so wear what you’d normally drink in. Except there are so many types and levels of house party that “dress as you please” is something of a misleading instruction.
To start with, house parties come in several chronological varieties. You have daytime house parties (usually consisting of friends sitting on each other’s sofas in their underwear eating pizza), evening house parties, and those eternally messy overnighters where you don’t leave until the sun comes up and everyone starts wearing sunglasses indoors. It’s also extremely important to gauge the types of houses involved and therefore the tone and formality of the occasion.
Small city flat? Clean cut start-up worker bees grinding until dawn. Three-story house in Leeds with Oxford commas in the address?
Ersatz students howling into their expensive glasses of wine and fighting off the token politician who just wants to talk about knife crime. My general rule for evening parties in urban environments is known unofficially among my friends as “one up.” One up from what you would typically wear to drink in public. Jeans but not ripped jeans, nice shirt or non-grubby t-shirt worn under an inexpensive but not-old jacket, and something smarter than trainers on your feet.
I like Chelsea boots or desert boots for British house parties – they’re casual enough that you don’t look like you’re trying too hard but slightly effortful enough that you don’t look like you couldn’t care less. The biggest mistake here is overdressing. My friend Vijay – an old university friend who still shows up to house drinks wearing button-down shirts and driving shoes – has occasionally elegant at casual house parties.
He’ll literally be wearing a dress shirt and nice trousers while everyone else is in hoodies and sweatpants. Don’t be Vijay. You don’t want to be the person that everyone else looks at thinking, “Are they trying too hard?” Underdressing for the standard British house party is much trickier, by contrast.
After-work drinking in the UK is always going to lean on the casual side – there’s a baseline level of scruffy that you rarely dip below. Showing up to a British house party in a concert t-shirt and jeans is borderline overdressing. Speaking solely for myself, if I’m ever in any doubt I default to the jeans and smart-ish top combination.
You can’t really go wrong – especially as British people hate bringing wine to people’s houses, so showing up wearing jeans is roughly equivalent to bringing a mid-range bottle of red as a social call. British dinner parties Dinner parties are where it starts getting properly tricky, because the British dinner party exists on a spectrum from making deliveries and eating on the sofa whilst watching Netflix to formally plated six-course meals with genuine linen tablecloths. This means it can be hard to know where you sit on the formality spectrum until you arrive.
There is a handy rule of thumb, however: know your hosts. Do they Instagram their table settings? Do they own napkin rings?
Do they own bread baskets? Do they use the word “amuse bouche” in everyday conversation and – if so – are they using it correctly? These are all indicators that you’re going to need to do one better than your usual “nice clothes” baseline.
Chinos or wool trousers, a shirt, and potentially a knit tie or formal-but-unstructured blazer. If you know your hosts are on the casual side of life, however, you’re fine to dial it right back. Again, jeans and a smart-ish top will do the job.
Just double cheque that your jeans are smart jeans – that strange brown stain you’ve had since that festival three summers ago may be permanent. House rules: always double cheque whether your hosts expect guests to remove shoes at the door. The key thing to know about the standard British dinner party is that, while your hosts may sincerely claim they’re not doing anything special, they secretly love dinner parties and expect guests to make an effort.
You’ll notice I’ve avoided so far specifying “what to wear,” which is deliberate; part of that effort is dressing in a way that suits you. I’ve never been to a dinner party and thought, “goddamnit, I wish I’d worn that hoodie instead.” But I have arrived in hoody-and-trainers and silently cursed everyone else’s shirt-dress-and-smart trouser combo. Now, whilst I could pontificate endlessly about what women’s clothing says about modern society, I will simply direct you to my friend Jennifer for guidance on women’s dinner party attire.
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Jennifer told me that smart jeans and a nice top works just as well for women as it does for men, but that she also likes wearing dresses to dinner parties – as long as they’re versatile enough to help you move furniture should the host suddenly decide the table is in the wrong place. But whatever you do, dress in a way that feels like you. British garden parties Ah, the great British garden party.
Relaxed yet refined, comfortable but peppered with social landmines. Garden gatherings, by their nature, tend to be more casual than your standard inside party but as with everything in life there’s casual and there’s casual. Best place to start is probably weather.
As a nation that holds steadfastly to schedules written by a farmers’ almanac from the 1830s, we have entire stretches of the year (May through September, obvs) that are officially “good for garden parties” despite rainfall being more likely than sunshine. I always assume I’ll need to wear at least a jacket to a garden party in the UK and plan my outfit around that. That usually means trousers, light jumper or shirt that I can remove if we get the promised sunlight, and shoes I don’t mind getting dirty.
Other things to consider: avoid white trousers unless you’re planning to stand for the entire party (you’ll never get the weed stains out). Also, always assume you’ll need to bring a jacket or overshirt with you as even if it’s sunny the weather will inevitably turn just as you’ve removed your sleeves. And by weather, I mean rain.
If you’re going to something slightly more formal in the garden – birthday lunches in summer, anniversary celebrations et cetera – you can usually wear “smart casual” as you would for a dinner party. Just tread carefully around suede shoes at these events; I wore my favourite suede loafers to a garden lunch once and returned them to my car next to the host’s new garden sprinkler system. They were never the same.
One note on upper-class garden parties – that bizarrely British tradition of summer weekends in the countryside also known as “posh people’s gardens.” Summer fetes, village gatherings with the explicit or implicit presence of greying parents and grandfathers: underdressing for these is far worse than overdressing. Wear trousers, not shorts. Wear a shirt, not a t-shirt.
And for the love of God, women: wear shoes. British weddings Another subcategory of the garden party, British weddings are nightmare fuel for how easily they can go wrong. My friend Katie once turned up to a wedding at reading in jeans and a nice top only for the groom’s mother to inform her that the bride had instructed guests to “wear wedding Attire” and not “nice outfits.” Katie changed into the only nice outfit she owned (mini-skirt and top, still friends) while her husband sat helpless beside her.
Weddings should be natural disasters waiting to happen – an excuse for modern Britons to parade around in antique traditions they don’t actually believe in. As such, they can vary wildly from “dress as casual as you like” to full-on “we require frock coats and top hats at the doors.” Same rule applies: cheque the invite. Does it say “wedding attire” or “garden wedding”?
Those are opposite ends of the spectrum. “Garden wedding” means smarter than you would typically expect to garden, not what you would wear to, say, eat a burger in the park. Or will garden in. Depending on the weather.
British pub gatherings taking place in people’s houses I had to save the easiest British dress code for last, because SIMPLY PUT: if you’re at someone’s house after starting in a pub, you’re already wearing what you should be. Does that guy in a full safari suit and pith helmet think he’s going to blend in at his mate’s house after the pub? No mate, you stand out.
At home. But seriously, unless you work in a uniform or have a physically demanding job where you’ll need to change before entering someone’s house, you’re perfectly welcome to attend a “get-holed at Kate’s” in what you’re currently wearing. Bonus tips for not messing up completely – Dress one-up from what you think the baseline attire will be.
That way, if you show up and everyone’s in jeans and t-shirts you can remove your jacket and roll up your sleeves. If everyone else shows up in suits, you were still smartish. – Always have a “just in case I’m wildly underdressed” item in the car. Mine is a navy knit tie I keep folded in my trunk.
Others might be a clean white shirt, or a casual blazer they keep in the car for such occasions. It lets you escalate your attire with minimal effort. – Ask the host! God knows British people love refusing to provide straight answers to straight questions, but if you meet someone for the first time at a party and ask “roughly what level of smart are people wearing?” nine times out of ten they’ll give you a direct answer rather than watch you silently suffer. – Prepare anecdotes about why you’re absurdly over- or underdressed.
Invent reasons why you’re in the wrong clothes, then lean into them. “Wow, it’s pretty hot in here – what did you do, escape from a maximum security prison in that getup?” is a good one. Laugh along with yourself, and others will join in. The one tip I think is most important here is that confidence is everything.
My mum turned up to a dinner party once in a vintage Beat Happening t-shirt she’d screen-printed herself and was mortified when her hosts remarked how nice her shirt was. She could’ve told them it was handmade and they would’ve believed her. Be confident.
You can almost get away with wearing a potato sack in the UK if you try hard enough.
People will respect your outfit more if you respect your outfit. The British have a complicated relationship with our own dress codes.
We pride ourselves on upholding tradition but will quietly laugh at you when you try to follow it. We insist people “dress how they like” but will pass surreptitious judgement on you when you don’t dress how we like. And yet, outside of our own isles we have become the epitome of casually dressed nations.
So there you have it. Wear a shirt. Or don’t.
You do you, mate. But whatever you do, don’t wear that sleeveless tops Travolta wore in Parents Just Don’t Understand to a casual get-together. No one will ever forget that you did.
