The Journal — Formalwear

New Year's Eve in New York City is one of the highest-stakes dressing occasions on the calendar. The city amplifies everything: the gathering is more dramatic, the photographs are more consequential, the setting is more memorable than almost any other night of the year. The dress code varies wildly depending on where you're spending it — a private dinner party at a townhouse in the West Village, a rooftop party in Tribeca, a gala at a major hotel, or a ticketed event at a cultural institution — but the underlying principle is consistent: this is not the night to underdress.

Holiday dinners occupy an ambiguous position in the dress code landscape. They are formal enough to deserve real effort — they're significant occasions, often the most important family or social gathering of the year — but they're rarely specified as anything more than "smart" or "festive." The result is that most people either underdress (jeans on Thanksgiving, casual on Christmas) or don't think about it at all.

Broadway opening nights occupy a specific position in New York's social calendar. They are part formal event, part cultural celebration, and part industry gathering — attended by the cast and creative team, major donors and producers, theater critics, the New York arts community, and the people who simply love Broadway enough to be in that specific room on that specific night.

Job interview attire has one job: to make the hiring decision easier for the people interviewing you by removing any question about your judgment. The standard for what achieves this varies significantly by industry. What a finance firm expects is different from what a law firm expects, which is different again from what a creative agency considers appropriate. Getting it right requires knowing which context you're in.