Tuxedo Junction

Griswold Lorillard of Tuxedo Park, New York, created a stir on October 10, 1886, when he wore an English-style dinner jacket.

Lorillard debuted his fashion statement that night at the Tuxedo Park Autumn Ball—and the rest is evening wear history.

This tuxedoed fellow from the Smithsonian American Art Museum collection is an amusing caricature by artist WIlliam King.

A sculptor who works in materials as diverse as vinyl and bronze, King uses long-legged, lanky male figures to explore human foible and pose. Body type and scale provide a never-ending source of formal and thematic richness, and through witty choreography, King's figures leer, ponder, share, love, and otherwise exemplify the emotions, drama, and humor of everyday life.

Source: Virginia M. Mecklenburg. Modern American Realism: The Sara Roby Foundation Collection (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press for the National Museum of American Art, 1987).

Pictured top: William King, born 1925, Tux, 1985, painted bronze, 28 3/8 x 6 x 3 7/8 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Sara Roby Foundation.

Pictured bottom: William King, Tux (detail).