Last night some of the least fashionable people on the continent (read: journalists and politicians) frocked up for Australian politics’ night of nights: the annual Midwinter Ball in Canberra, described by one staffer as “the Oscars for ugly people”. The occasion gave the rest of us the opportunity to judge whether they were (as one young reporter overheard in an inner-Sydney pub last night put it) “serving slay”.
Earlier this year, Crikey interviewed Derek Guy, editor of online menswear outlet Put This On — you might know him as the viral menswear guy on X. The piece was so well received that we thought we would bring him back for a round-up of antipodean black tie shenanigans. We put Guardian Australia’s gallery from the event to Guy, and these were his verdicts.
Anthony Albanese
“It’s a strange outfit.
“The reason why it looks strange is because he should be wearing a bow tie — not a long tie — and he’s wearing a formal shirt, which is what he should be wearing with a dinner jacket, but there’s no waist covering, so you see the bottom of the bib. So it would’ve been a really nice outfit, if he just wore a black bow tie and waist covering.”
Jim Chalmers
“Look, it’s 2024. If some guy was attending a black tie event, and he really had no other clothes … I think you could get away with it. If someone is of means, I do think that it is nice to wear (proper) black tie.
“If he is someone of means, and he does attend these events regularly, I would say — go get a tuxedo. Go get a dinner suit. Go get a formal shirt, and go get a black bow tie, so it doesn’t look like you’re attending a business meeting or a funeral.”
Andrew Charlton
“His jacket doesn’t hug his neck as well as it should. He has a very tall neck — so the shirt collar is made correctly for his neck, but what he needs is a smaller jacket collar so that the jacket comes on top of him. Essentially you want the coat to come up on your neck a little bit more, given his build and his posture. The jacket is a little bit short, and since it’s a little bit short, the buttoning point is a little bit high, and his trousers are a little bit slim, so it’s a bit of a shrunken suit. He should be wearing a bow tie.
“This outfit isn’t great. The suit doesn’t fit very well, it’s the wrong tie, they’re not great shoes.”
Peter Dutton
“This is much better. I like the shawl collar. I would just tell him to put on a bow tie next time. A bow tie would look much better here than a long tie.
“This looks like a bespoke or a handmade jacket because it looks like the lapels may have some hand-made stitching. Peter Dutton’s jacket sits better [than Andrew Charlton’s] — it looks like it was custom made for him.”
Michael McCormack
“Michael McCormack has the best outfit so far that we’ve looked at. I would just say he should get a waist covering.”
David Littleproud
“He should get his trousers hemmed, although it looks like he’s wearing Chelsea boots. I think that is kind of charming, for an Australian to wear black Chelsea boots with a dinner suit. What we might be seeing is that his trousers might be bunching because he’s wearing a belt. Where you are wearing tailored trousers with either side tabs or a belt, they end up slipping down a little bit, which can end up causing the bunching that you see at the bottom of his trousers.
“For a formal event, to get a really clean look, I would gently suggest to him to get a slightly larger cut, a slightly fuller trouser and a slightly larger jacket. That will make the fabric hang better — and I’d make the trousers a slightly higher rise, and also combine the high-rise trousers with suspenders.
“He should wear a different shirt, it looks like he’s wearing a business shirt.”
Bill Shorten
“Bill Shorten should shorten his sleeves. The one issue with this, when you’re looking at the sleeve, my guess is that it’s a ready-to-wear jacket for two reasons: one is that the lapels are buckling away from his chest so the jacket doesn’t fit him as well as it should … the problem with many ready-to-wear garments nowadays is that the garment is sold to you with the sleeve button holes already cut and the buttons sewn on — what the manufacturer should do is sell you an unfinished sleeve. That way, you take it to your tailor and they cut the sleeve to exactly where it should be, and then they cut the button holes and then they attach the buttons.
“Bill Shorten is wearing a jacket where the buttons have already been attached — so he can’t shorten the sleeve without having the bottom-most button be too close to the edge of the cuff. What would end up happening in this case, a good tailor would have to shorten the sleeve from the armhole, which can then end up being a very expensive and sometimes risky operation.”
David Pocock
“It’s a pretty good outfit — he’s wearing a wing collar … it’s not cut very well. I would probably put him in a slightly higher-rise trouser [but] I like that he’s wearing a waist covering, he’s one of the few that got that right. He’s wearing black patent leather shoes, which is great — that’s what more men should be doing.”
Josh Burns
“I would put him in slightly fuller-rise trousers, because they make him look a bit lanky. He looks like he’s wearing a belt — which is probably why it looks like his trousers are collapsing. Like the others he should wear a waist covering. He’s wearing a black suit jacket … get a dinner suit.”
Best dressed
Guy’s best dressed for the Midwinter Ball from the photos presented was a tie between former Nationals leader Michael McCormack, as well as Tanya Plibersek’s partner Michael Coutts-Trotter. While he said Coutts-Trotter needed a waist covering, he really liked Coutts-Trotter’s pocket square.
Of the women, while Guy stressed that womenswear was not his speciality and that he thought everyone looked nice, he was partial to the outfits worn by actor Rachel Griffiths (who attended as a guest of Nine’s Peter Hartcher) and Sports Minister Anika Wells.
