Mess dress is the military term for the formal evening dress worn in the mess or at other formal occasions. It is also known as mess uniform and mess kit. It frequently consists of a mess jacket and trousers worn with a formal shirt and other formal accessories, though the exact form varies depending on the uniform regulations for each service.
This style of military dress is largely restricted to the British, Commonwealth of Nations and United States armed forces, though it is also sometimes worn by members of civilian uniformed services and members of a Royal Household. The French, Imperial German, and other navies adopted their own versions of mess dress during the late nineteenth century, influenced by the Royal Navy.
Read more about Mess Dress: Australia, Canada, Jamaica, New Zealand, Pakistan, United States, Germany, Israel, Sweden
Famous quotes containing the words mess and/or dress:
“Our passions do not live apart in locked chambers but dress in their small wardrobe of notions, bring their provisions to a common table and mess together, feeding out of the common store according to their appetite.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“Iconic clothing has been secularized.... A guardsman in a dress uniform is ostensibly an icon of aggression; his coat is red as the blood he hopes to shed. Seen on a coat-hanger, with no man inside it, the uniform loses all its blustering significance and, to the innocent eye seduced by decorative colour and tactile braid, it is as abstract in symbolic information as a parasol to an Eskimo. It becomes simply magnificent.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)