Hi guys,

I'm off to a Christmas dinner with work next week and was just thinking through what to wear for it. It's nominally a black tie thing, but it's not that strict (last year some people wore suits, some people went for a tux, other just had jeans and a t-shirt), so I have a bit of freedom there to play about with it.

So basically the situation is this: I want to look like I've made a bit of an effort, but I want to make sure I stand out. What do you all reckon?

Maybe you could wear a white shirt, black trousers and nice black shoes, and have the shirt buttoned down a bit and wear one of these kinda scarves with it...

http://aardpiggy.com/black%20scarf%20for%20sale.gif

They are square when you lay them out.

If you have it so that its coming down in a triangle, not too far, and leave it hanging a bit loose around your neck...you dont want to look like its choking you. You'll have to undo the top couple of buttons but make sure your shirt isn't open too far...the scarf should be taking up most of the openness of the shirt. And try not to have it on the outside, it should be on the inside..but not bulging down inside the shirt, just dont have the scarf coming out over the opening of the shirt.

Also make sure it looks small enough so that it doesnt just look like you forgot to take your scarf off!

I think it looks pretty good, and your guaranteed no one else will be wearing it. It can look kinda pirate-esque too!

If you have a nice coat to go with it you would be sorted.

Nice idea there with the scarf - I've actually gone for a Sinatra-esque grey suit with a white shirt and black tie (undone just enough to take the edge off of it).

If you're going to steal a look, it might as well be Frank's

I do stuff like this a lot. What has gotten me compliments is what I call
a sudo-tuxedo. I'll pair some tuxedo pieces with some non-tuxedo
pieces. For example:

I have a real bow-tie... the kind you have to tie on your own. I haven't
gotten good at tying it, so I wear it untied. It gives me the "I just came
from a formal function" look.

If I don't wear an actual tuxedo shirt, I wear a dress shirt with vertical
stripes or I have this modern shirt with tuxedo shirt stylings (think
Guess?). The rest is either dress slacks or dark jeans and a pair of
black shoes. I'll mix and match according to how "dressy" I want to be.

Most recently I wore this cool black tuxedo jacket with black embroidery
from ebay. For the "tuxedo" shirt I wore this regular white dress shirt with
white vertical stripes(very subtle) and my untied bow tie. Then I wore a
pair of $50 Express dress slacks, black belt and my black work shoes.

hope this helps... good luck and have fun