Black Tie Optional

What's more elitist--formality, or anarchy?

Every man looks good in a tuxedo. Or at least, every man looks better in a tuxedo. The same is true of women’s clothing: no one’s promising a Salma Hayekian glow-up the minute you slip into an evening gown. But whatever your natural graces, they are guaranteed to be at their best advantage in formal dress. Black tie and tails, like lifting weights, never fails to make a man more attractive than he would otherwise be.

This is not true of all clothing styles. In fact there are some fashion trends that almost dare you to try and look good in them. I’m thinking of the shapeless drapery that makes its way from the Paris runway to the clearance rack at H&M, à la Meryl Streep’s monologue in The Devil Wears Prada. It’s not blue: it’s cerulean! But whatever color it is, it looks like a bed curtain.

To pull off those kinds of pointedly disheveled looks, you have to be so genetically chiseled that the razor blade of your cheekbone cuts through whatever slovenly pile of fabric you happen to be swimming in. This is difficulty level: extreme. In fact you might say that there are two types of outfit: the kind you have to elevate with your beauty, and the kind that elevates you with its beauty.

In this regard, surprisingly, the elitist conventions of formal attire are actually more egalitarian than the floppy free-for-all of modern fashion. The rules and the structure are exclusive in one sense, and inclusive in another: they make it easy to distinguish between those in and out of the know. But then, so do the coded signals of today’s high couture, to those who can pick up on them. At least the basic principles of black tie attire are clear. And what contemporary dress doesn’t do, at least not consistently, is bestow upon everyone who wears it—old and young, dazzling and plain—a baseline level of elegance. That’s what the tuxedo does.

I raise all this because we’re in the lead-up to Christmas, a time when any church with half a sense of decency will be positively lush with Advent hymns and carols. And these are the tuxedoes and evening gowns of choral repertoire. Even a mediocre ensemble sounds good singing them. They are so richly harmonized that they forgive most minor errors; everyone loves them, and they’re gorgeous.

So if you’re not Rutter-maxxing this time of year, I don’t know what to say. You should be absolutely blasting the Biebl. Laying down the Lauridsen. Heaping on the Handel. Sorry to my non-denominational friends: you can keep your electric guitars and your smoke machines the other 11 months of the year. But this is Advent, and we’re doing it old school.

And in fact, it was back in L.A., when I was part of a fairly “low-church” congregation, that I realized the tuxedo principle also applies to music. Every year around this time, the pastor would invite anyone who could sight-read up onto the platform, and everyone would get handed a copy of Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus” from the Messiah.

Now, this is a piece that far transcends any reputation it could possibly achieve, however towering. Yes it’s a staple, yes it may even be a cliché. It doesn’t matter: the light of it spills over and bursts the bonds of its familiarity, pouring fresh and alive out of the heart of man like molten gold. Try to sing it without feeling your own feelings, I dare you. You can’t.

And what really struck me about that tradition was the sight of these seemingly ordinary people getting enveloped in the blinding white glory of the sound. These L.A. hipsters, beanies and flannels and all, most of them aspiring actors or musicians, would shamble up to the front of the church and be transfigured in the radiance of the music. I can’t describe it any other way: they became a heavenly choir.

The principles of their musical training, and the magisterial architecture of Handel’s composition, came up and through those disheveled kids until they stood tall like sculpted angels supporting the rafters of a medieval church. It didn’t matter if they were all that good at singing: Handel elevated them, just like an evening dress elevates a homely girl, the vigor and the joy of the thing calling something magnificent out of them. You could almost see it happening.

There are some kinds of culture that condescend to the lowest common denominator. And then there are others that invite you to live up to them, so that you almost can’t help trying. And which of these is more elitist, more unkind? The one that leaves you to whatever meager and uncultivated talents you happen to possess naturally, or the one that refines you seven times over like silver?

The prophet Isaiah saw a day coming when God would clothe us in “garments of salvation,” pouring glory and substance onto us like robes of white. The child born in Bethlehem put on our human flesh like clothing. And in the middle of the music, enveloped in it as in royal livery, you can start to believe humanity itself would be suitable attire for the most wondrous of all loves.

Rejoice evermore,
Spencer

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