Jump to content

Talk:Mess dress uniform

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Untitled

[edit]

Is Mess dress the equivalent of Black Tie or of White Tie.

Both and neither! It is a long subject. Various nationalities also have varying traditions.

It is often the most formal type of dress, and such is worn both to white tie and black tie events. Both black tie and white tie is by tradition evening wear; however, it is often worn in the afternoon for such things as weddings (in Sweden white tie is the traditional dress for wedding, at all timings). Here the military individual would be more appropriately dressed in a uniform, the more formal the better. Full formal uniforms are also worn in the evening at specific events.

Navies usually have two types of formal mess dress, mess dress and mess undress, where the type of vest worn may vary. Some still have the formal white tie version with tails, although as the article points out, the RN no longer has this type. The USPHS has a formal style of mess dress, with a white vest and white bow tie, but with a short jacket. I don't know about the US Navy. Glenlarson 15:15, 24 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

In the Canadian Forces, there's generally 3 different designs of mess dress floating around: the dinner jacket and accoutrements (must-have for regular force officers, optional for everyone else); the "Mess CF" drss (the pre-DEU midnight-blue tri-force mess dress); and "Mess Service", which is Service Dress with white shirt/bowtie for men and the white rollneck blouse for women; altho' recently they started allowing members to wear the basic Service Dress with the normal shirt & tie, the concept being you can't order a member to wear a uniform that you didn't issue. So basically CF mess dress runs the gamut from evening dress to a business suit. And just to add more variety, the Navy has "Shipboard Dress": Service Dress pants, short-sleeve summer dress shirt, and cummerbund (!). Doesn't look bad with the Navy whites, but let me tell you: there ain't many coloured cummerbunds that don't look dorky with linden green shirt & rifle green pants. SigPig 06:33, 10 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I edited a paragraph about the US Army White Mess Uniform. The paragraph basically stated that the White Mess Uniform is no longer allowed for wear. This is not true. The Army White Uniform has been done away with; however, the White Mess Uniform is still authorized for wear. -- A.G.Barker, SFC, USA

Ladies?

[edit]

Can we please have a description/discussion of women's military formalwear added to the various sections? At present, formal wear has mess dress listed under "unisex"? Is that true? Men and women wear the exact same formalwear? Please put an internal link under Women's styles at formal wear, i.e. [[mess dres#female mess dress|women's mess dress or something of that sort.

Article would also benefit from a discussion of what retired personnel and personnel on leave or not in active service where to formal occasions, if there are such guidelines.

Just some thoughts Quill 01:09, 9 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Contemporary British Army mess jackets

[edit]

I have no intention of getting in a edit war with Plumtree100 over this issue. As far as I know there is no publicly accessible central record of how many individual regiments or corps currently retain the "infantry style" jacket or have changed to the "cavalry style" - since this is essentially a matter to be decided at unit level. The only consistently up-to-date sources of such information would be the websites of the various tailoring firms specialising in this type of uniform and these cannot be cited directly as references under the Wikipedia rules applying to commercial advertising. All that can be said is that prior to the regimental/corps amalgamations of 1958 to 2006 virtually all infantry, and most corps, had the simpler open fronted mess jackets and that now (with the exceptions cited and probably a few others) the position is reversed.If anyone knows better then please edit accordingly. Buistr (talk) 23:04, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Australian Army Perspective

[edit]

In the Australian Army there is both 'summer mess kit' which is a white jacket and almost identical between different parts of the army, the second type is 'winter mess kit' which is made of a thicker material but has different coloured jacket designs depending on the wearers Corps. The winter mess dress also includes a waist coat. With both types the trousers are the same and vary slightly between Corps. As for women's attire in the Australian army the dresss is the same as mens except women wear a skirt instead of trousers. Both versions have a bow-tie and white shirt.--TinTin (talk) 06:12, 18 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

British Merchant Navy and Coastguard?

[edit]

Has anybody any information relating to the use of mess dress by the Merchant Navy or the Coastguard? --Thefrood (talk) 03:00, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Sweden?

[edit]

At the marriage ceremony of Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden and Daniel Westling on June 19, 2010 both H.M. King Carl XVI Gustaf and Prince Carl Philip appear to be wearing Swedish navy mess dress. Perhaps somebody with Swedish language skills could track down some more detailed info about the appearance and use of this mess dress.

Here are a couple of English language links

--Thefrood (talk) 01:51, 8 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Just noticed that sv.wikipedia.org have an article on Swedish mess dress perhaps somebody could translate? --Thefrood (talk) 02:21, 8 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Done, A big thank you to Mr.choppers for translating the Swedish article. --Thefrood (talk) 08:51, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Air force mess dress

[edit]

Is this the lesser or the greater mess dress? Greenshed (talk) 21:01, 9 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Germany - Bundeswehr

[edit]

The German wiki page about formal Bundeswehr uniforms has a description of both male & female mess dress. Unfortunately there a couple of words that the machine-translated version fails on - "Seidengalons" and "Torerobund".
Ausgehuniform#Gesellschaftsanzug
--Thefrood (talk) 14:51, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

"Seidengalons" is a silk dress stripe along the trouser leg ([1]), while a Torerobund is a bullfighter-style waste sash (cf Kummerbund for cummerbund), called "fajín" in Spanish. I find Google image search in the respective languages an invaluable search tool.  ⊂| Mr.choppers |⊃  (talk) 18:32, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, I did do a text search on the words but that really was not much help - I'll have to remember image search for next time. --Thefrood (talk) 18:46, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Done what I can with the machine-translation, however if a German speaker does happen upon this I'm pretty sure it could benefit from a polish. --Thefrood (talk) 19:23, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
This is becoming a habbit, thanks once again to Mr.choppers for a top translation. --Thefrood (talk) 19:41, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks and cheers. This is kind of fun, actually.  ⊂| Mr.choppers |⊃  (talk) 19:53, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Inconsistencies

[edit]
  • The article gives dress numbers in all the following forms: no. 1, No 1, No. 1.
  • There were 2 instances of epaulets and 6 of epaulettes; I converted to the latter throughout.
  • AFAICS the article is not tagged as British or American English. I converted the single instance of "pants" to "trousers", of which there were already 24 instances, so maybe you'll want to go for British. If so, you should change the "tuxedo" to "dinner jacket".
--Stfg (talk) 19:36, 3 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I think "No. 1" is how I was taught to do it.
As the article has large sections devoted both to British/commonwealth and US usage of mess dress I imagine that settling on one flavour of English could be contentious but my vote would be to use British (Oxford) English as this uses "Z" in a similar manner to American English, so hopefully the US contributors to (and readers of) the page won't feel the language too strange. --Thefrood talk 19:52, 3 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Fastening of US Marine & Navy Jackets

[edit]

I know this is a relatively minor detail, but I have added a note on how the US naval & Coast Guard officer and Marine enlisted jackets are double-breasted, but cut so as not to overlap, and instead fasten in the center. This is unusual: most other civilian (and military) exemplars in double-breasted seem to be cutaway, made in such a way as to be worn unbuttoned without gathering under the arms. The US version seems to be in imitation of the frogged smoking jacket/tuxedo, but the fastener does not appear to be a frog: it looks like a hook-and-eye on the inside with brass buttons on the outside for a more military appearance. Can anyone confirm if this is indeed how it fastens on the inside? Jpbrenna (talk) 07:49, 29 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

[edit]

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Mess dress. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

  • If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
  • If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 10:10, 9 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 22 June 2018

[edit]
The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: move the page to Mess dress uniform as requested at this time, per the discussion below. As noted, there was little evidence presented to show that Mess dress was the more common form. Discussion does not seem to be ongoing after two weeks. Please feel free to initiate a new move request after a reasonable period if you would like to move the article to a different title. Dekimasuよ! 18:38, 19 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]


Mess dressMess dress uniform – Per WP:PRECISION. Although "mess dress" may be evident to initiated readers, there is a whole bunch of related "dress" articles around, so it wouldn't hurt to give a little more precision to this article's name. Per WP:CONSISTENCY with Full dress uniform, and Service dress uniform. Chicbyaccident (talk) 01:22, 22 June 2018 (UTC) --Relisting. Mahveotm (talk) 10:31, 4 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Additional discussion

[edit]

@SMcCandlish: inter alia: Alright, so after this revert and comment, it all kind of became just one dimension too blurred. We have full dress uniform, dress uniform, mess dress, service dress uniform, and military uniform (did I forget any?). This sphere of articles all merit a clear overview. The certitude with which some users often contradictionarly assert definitions and scopes across these articles (as well as their assertions of applicable WP:COMMONNAME terms) would probably benefit from being more reevaluated than what seems to currently be the case. Especially WP:GLOBAL seems to be neglected. Chicbyaccident (talk) 11:53, 6 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, this is iffy, but hard to nail down.  — SMcCandlish ¢ 😼  12:32, 6 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Evidence? The opposes are claiming that "mess dress uniform" is not common (and that "mess dress" is the most common, but providing no evidence). The longer phrase is actually very common [2], including from most vendors of mess dress uniforms. However, a corresponding search without "uniform" produces useless results, because it's mostly adjectival uses ("mess dress" as a modifier): mess dress jacket, mess dress trousers, mess dress skirt, mess dress enlisted, mess dress code, etc., etc. All of these would have to be excluded (along with mess dress uniform) to finally boil down to "mess dress" used as a noun phrase by itself. Even starting this process with google doesn't seem to work; it always return about the same number of hits. So, some other means of getting stats would have to be used.  — SMcCandlish ¢ 😼  12:30, 6 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
That's pretty much about that doubts I have as well. Let's say "mess dress" is really the initiated correct form here, both by authoritative sources and backed by an authoritative view of available statistics (although none has really presented that). Still, it wouldn't hurt with a -uniform for WP:PRECISION, since at least none could possible argue that this precision, no matter how redundant, would be strictly incorrect. Thus WP:CONSISTENCY with the other ones weight in pretty strongly, one is inclined to think. In addition, the contents scopes and possibly even existence of all three of full dress uniform, dress uniform (raison d'être?), and mess dress uniform really could use a pretty bold work-through. Chicbyaccident (talk) 13:20, 6 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Russia and the former USSR

[edit]

The recently added "Russia and the former USSR" section is interesting but the uniform described does not seem to be a Russian version of mess dress. It looks like a summer variant service dress and the text says that is worn at ceremonies such as receiving state awards which, in a western context, would be a service dress or ceremonial dress event. Can anyone provide any evidence that it is actually a form of mess dress or is worn an evening military social events like formal dinners etc? Thanks Greenshed (talk) 13:37, 27 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • I've no documentary evidence but I did work in Moscow (at a foreign embassy) during the final years of the USSR. At one evening function attended by Soviet army officers the "Tsar's green" parade uniform was worn. I don't think that "mess dress" in the strict British or US sense has ever been a part of Russian military culture. Having said that an illustration of the grey uniform does appear in Lieutenant-Colonel Albert Seaton's 1972 book "The Soviet Army" with the caption "The dress as worn here is for evening wear or for informal occasions".Buistr (talk) 23:56, 27 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • The concept of mess dress extends significantly beyond British and US military culture. However, as this Russian uniform not really mess dress then I don't think it belongs in this article unless a source can be found which states that it is a Russian mess dress. Greenshed (talk) 21:31, 16 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I see that the stuff on Russian uniforms is back. I get the impression that the idea that it's a Russian equivalent of mess dress is a personal interpretation rather than a verifiable fact. It looks like a form of service dress to me. However, perhaps I'm wrong; if a citation to a reliable sources can be found that states that it is a Russian mess dress or similar then WP:V would be met. Greenshed (talk) 17:58, 5 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]