Word: tuxes
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Television provided Fleck with the chance to escape what he eventually felt were the Revival's constraints. Two years ago, producers of the Lonesome Pine Specials asked him to do a solo show. Bela Fleck and Guests began with the tux-clad banjoist joining the Blair String Quartet in a four-movement classical work by Fleck and composer Edgar Meyer. It ended with a jazz section riffed by Bela and the trio that became the Flecktones: Howard Levy on keyboards and harmonica, the brothers Victor and Roy ("Future Man") Wooten on bass guitar and Drumitar (a guitar wired to electric...
...hooked on it, is a hard habit to break. Like God, Henry thought . . ."); some manic riffs on fame ("That dumbbell the Duke of Windsor he threw in the sponge for a tart. You want the Duke and Duchess for a charity ball, you rent them like a tux from Tip-Top"); and the most furiously original cast of buccaneers, entrepreneurs, intellectuals and whackos north of Niagara Falls...
...long after Griswold's entrance, tuxedoes became socially acceptable. By the turn of the century, tailors were producing tuxes as blithely as they turned cuffs; the rage became the rule. The first off-the-peg tux appeared around World War I, and tails were dusted off mostly for coronations. Movie stars such as Gary Cooper, William Powell, Cary Grant and Fred Astaire burnished the national formal-fashion ideal. Cooper looked as cool in a dinner jacket as he did in jeans...
Nowadays there is a range of colors available for tuxes (like the sun- doused pastels in After Six's "Miami Vice" collection), as well as a scale of prices that rise from the bargain basement ($139 for a polyester- blend model made in Hungary) to $3,500 for a hand-tailored cashmere or silk number from William Fioravanti in New York City. "There are only about 500 of us in the world who own these Fioravanti tuxedoes," boasts New Jersey Entrepreneur Joe Taub, who swanks up his with diamond-and-ruby studs. Giorgio Armani works subtle and cunning variations...
...necessary to be a board chairman to spiff up in a tux, however. "The tuxedo is a great equalizer," suggests Chicago Fund Raiser Sugar Rautbord. "It's hard to distinguish between the head waiter and a CEO." Bill Blass, whose traditional tux designs for After Six are among the industry's best sellers, brings the whole matter down to earth and into perspective: "Ultimately, it all stems back to women. It's the gal who wants to dress up, and the fellow has to go along." That's one reason Blass has been a success for so long; he knows...