For Four Partygoers, It Was Nip and Tux All the Way

If you think the holiday season is rough on partygoers, consider what it does to their clothes--especially a rented tuxedo.

Take the Pierre Cardin Espace model, rental number 002, from Mike Caruso Gentleman’s Apparel in Santa Monica, one of many haberdashers that rent formal wear in this area.

It was tracked for four weeks of the holiday season to see what it would see. And what this symbol of male elegance saw was this:

- A “wild” USC sorority party in Malibu.

- A mix-up over dates--both the calendar kind and the human kind--that left a Santa Monica fireman “banging my head against the wall” in a snafu that ended happily;

- A date that didn’t show, but Las Vegas-type gamblers who did.

- And a computer salesman who started New Year’s Eve dining in Beverly Hills and ended up dancing on tables in Orange County.

Just routine stuff for a lend-lease tux, this one a Size 40 regular, circa 1986, all-wool and renting for $75. If sold, the jacket and pants would run $495.

For the rental fee the customer also gets a shirt, cummerbund, bow tie, shirt studs and cuff links. Shoes are an extra $7.50 or $15, depending on the style.

“Some men don’t know how to take care of clothing,” said 23-year-old Tony Caruso, grandson of the man who started the Santa Monica business 44 years ago. “Some people will bring it back in a brown paper bag all wadded up; it gets kind of ridiculous. . . . We’ve had a lot of wedding parties where they’ll have a cake fight and (the tux renter) will get thrown in the pool.”

Caruso’s charges a $1 insurance fee for just such instances. But number 002 came through the holidays in fine shape, he said.

The tux that dined and danced so well is an updated model: broader shoulders, tapering at the waist, with satin lapels. For an even trendier look the jacket can be worn with pleated pants.

Four men took it out for a good time to different functions. The first was 20-year-old Lawrence Hess, a UCLA junior majoring in French and linguistics. The occasion was a USC Gamma Phi Beta sorority formal at a Malibu restaurant on Dec. 4.

His date was Deann Hechinger, a 19-year-old sophomore at USC majoring in business. The two met while working as salespeople at the clothing store ixi:z. “I picked out the tuxedo,” she said. “It was the first one he tried on and it looked really good on him.”

Said Hess: “Sometimes I go for a new look (in a tuxedo) and this had a really good look. I hadn’t rented one in about a year, but I was prepared to pay the price--$75.”

Hechinger described the formal as “a wild party. There was a deejay and we danced all night.”

Milo Garcia was the next to rent the tuxedo on Dec. 12 for a party he thought was the next day. But the 33-year-old Santa Monica fireman/paramedic got his dates wrong; the party was actually that night.

“Two months ago a girl invited me to a Christmas party on the set of the soap opera ‘Days of Our Lives,’ where she works,” he explained. “She’s an aerobics instructor and she trains people in the cast. In the meantime I met this girl Sarah, and now we’re seeing each other. I picked up the tux on Friday, thinking the party was on Saturday.

Panic Over Mix-Up

“I realized the mix-up Friday night. First I panicked. I talked to Sarah, and she said, ‘You made these plans, do what you want to do.’ I felt like an idiot, of course. The next day I called the other girl and told her and she was understanding, she had a good time. But I didn’t want to mess up my relationship with Sarah.

“So I put on the tuxedo that night and took her out to eat at Whitefeathers in Playa del Rey, and we went dancing at Vertigo later. It was a great evening, but for about 15 minutes I was banging my head against the wall.”

The tuxedo next went out with Hector Ramirez, a 29-year-old loan executive for First Federal Savings Bank of California in Santa Monica. The occasion was a birthday party for a friend in Huntington Beach on Dec. 20. Ramirez went solo: “My date flaked out on me at the last minute,” he said.

‘They Went All Out’

“My friend and his wife are well-to-do, and they went all out. They held it in the clubhouse of the housing complex where they live and had roulette tables, blackjack and hired professional dealers. There was a lot of food: crab, lobster, shrimp. It was a classier party than what people normally do. People came in from other states for this party.”

After the party Ramirez went dancing at Bentley’s Tavern in Santa Monica where he ran into some friends from his office. “I got a lot of compliments there on the tuxedo,” he recalled.

The tuxedo got a workout on New Year’s Eve with 25-year-old Rick Steenfen, a computer salesman with Microage Computers in Santa Monica. The evening started with dinner at the Bistro in Beverly Hills with girlfriend Marlo Singer. “We tried to get into Spago, but that was difficult,” he said. “We wanted a nice place to sit down and relax before we got wild.”

The next stop was Orange County where the couple went to a party at the Catch restaurant in Anaheim. “They have a big room they rent out for parties,” Steenfen said, “and the host throws this huge party every year. Last year there were about 150, 200 people; this year there must have been about 400. There were bars everywhere, a deejay, dancing. But people tended to dress down a little bit this year; there were a couple of hundred guys, but only about 10 or 15 had tuxedos on. The rest were dressed semi-formally.”

The party hit its peak, he explained, when he and some friends danced on top of the tables. “We put on the show for the party. Everyone was watching us. We were wild. But I told Marlo to leave the camera in the car!”

They left about 1 a.m. and continued the festivities with a private party for about 20 friends at the Doubletree Hotel in Orange. “We were dancing on the tables there, too. That lasted till about 3 a.m.”

Steenfen wore a silk scarf with his tuxedo; “I did it last year, too. It’s a little more fashionable. It makes the tuxedo stand out from all the others. And I chose this style of tuxedo because I like the more up-to-date styles.”

The life span of this tuxedo, as with other popular styles, will probably not exceed eight months. Rented out on the average of once a week, the wear and tear takes its toll on the suit.

“We have at least eight styles in black alone, which gets kind of confusing for the customer,” Tony Caruso observed. “Some of the styles have been around for years, like the classic peak lapel and shawl collar jackets. They’re in 100% wool; no one wants to rent an all-polyester tuxedo.”

‘Just Plain Crazy’

Black is big for the fall and holiday seasons; come summer, white and silver-gray jackets are more in demand. And around prom time, Caruso said, “It’s just plain crazy here.”

The tuxedo dates back to 1896 in this country, according to men’s clothing designer Alan Flusser in his book, “Clothes and the Man.” Tails were de rigeuer at formal events until a New Yorker named Griswold Lorillard wore a dinner jacket minus tails to a party at the exclusive country club in Tuxedo Park, N. Y. The style of the jacket, and the name tuxedo, stuck.

Some argue that the peaked-lapel and the shawl collar jackets, both single- and double-breasted, are the only two acceptable styles, and certainly those have endured. Trends such as ruffled shirts have not.

“What kind of people still want ruffled shirts?” Caruso asked. “People with no taste! They look at pictures of old weddings and see a guy that looked good. But the picture was taken 10 years ago. We try to steer them away from that. But if they insist, that’s what we let them have. We’re counselors here.

“We get a lot of people calling up and asking what white tie means,” he continued, and he tells them: a tail coat, matching trousers with braid on the outside seam, white pique tie, white pique waistcoat and white wing-collar shirt with a stiff pique front.

Even black-tie draws some questions. “We get guys who come in here with the invitation stating formal attire or black-tie, and they bring in a black pin-stripe suit and ask if that’s OK. Maybe we’ll say a black suit with a tux shirt and bow-tie is passable, even though it’s a bit tacky, but sometimes guys are trying to save their pennies.”

Men can add color to a basic tuxedo with the cummerbund and tie; Caruso’s stock includes shades of pink, blue and red. “But 95% of the men go with black,” Caruso said.

Shoes are another matter. Go to any black-tie function and you’re bound to see a wide variety of footwear, little of it correct. Two styles are accepted: the patent-leather or plain leather evening pump with a ribbed silk bow in front, or the patent-leather, plain-toe lace-up oxford.

These days men throw caution to the wind and wear black Reeboks, cowboy boots or tassel loafers. Caruso said few men take advantage of rented shoes. “People think they’re too shiny, and they feel more comfortable wearing their own shoes.”

Just as women are transformed when they don a formal gown in a dressing room, so are men when they try on a tuxedo. Said Caruso, “A lot of guys come in and they say they’re really regretting this. Then they put the tuxedo on and say they feel like Fred Astaire. They’re standing there, looking at themselves in the three-way mirror and loving it. How many times a year do you get to do this? After a while they definitely start singing a different tune.”

Ask the men who wore number 002.