WHITE TIE COMEDY.

Northern Advocate, 18 May 1914, Page 8

WHITE TIE COMEDY.

There is at least one town in Ger-. many which prides itself on a punctiliousness in matters of male attire which would commend itself to the most exacting London arbiter of ele(;an'3e. That town is He'delbe'rg.

The honour of the burgesses has been assailed by a paragraph which has gone the round of the European press to the effect that at a ball at Heidelberg the Master of the Ceremonies refused admission to some male S-uests who presented themselves in dinner-jackets with black ties on the grounds that at a ball the dinner-jac-ket must be worn with a white tie.

The Town Information Office or Heidelberg has now addressed to "The Daily Mail" a formal cammunique in impeccable English rebutting the slur. The incident did not take place at a fashionable ' function, the document states, but at a fancy dress ball. Gentlemen (spelt with aG : in the communique) wearing evening dress were allowed admission. The dinner-jacket, the document adds, is regarded, in Heidelberg as in England, as an "undress evening coat with which a black tie is always worn."

Some officers presenting themselves in dinner-jackets with black the "M.C." demanded that they should lend an air of fantasy to their conventional garb by allowing their coat collar to be trimmed with gold or -.silver braid and by changing their black ties for white or coloured ones.

'..-■ "It will thus be seen,"'the document fcays, "that Heidelberg not only disapproved of the incongruous combination of dinner-jacket-with white tie for the ballroom which she is accused of having countenanced, but condemned, it in the strongest terms by declaring it to be fit for a merry-andrew and consigning it to the realm of fools.