The Journal

Black tie is a dress code with one widely understood option for women — the gown — and several other valid options that are less frequently taken. The gown is not required. It is not even always the best choice. For women who are more comfortable in tailored clothing than in floor-length dresses, and who dress with enough knowledge to understand that tailored formal wear is not only acceptable but excellent, black tie is a context that accommodates their preferences fully.

The coat is the garment that most exposes the consequences of poor fit — because it is worn over everything else, because it is the first thing visible, and because it is the thing a person arrives in. A coat that fits badly announces its inadequacy immediately, regardless of what is underneath it.

The idea of "power dressing" in the 1980s was an approximation — women's clothing designed to signal authority by borrowing the visual language of men's suits. Broad padded shoulders, boxy silhouettes, the explicit statement that here is a woman dressed like authority is supposed to look. It worked, in its moment, but it was an approximation.

Ready-to-wear suits are designed for a body that most women don't have. The shoulders are cut for a standardized width. The waist suppression assumes a specific proportion between chest and hip. The sleeve length accounts for an average arm, which fits almost no one. The result is a suit that requires significant alteration before it fits acceptably, and even then, the alterations are adjustments to a pattern that was never yours.