Canada’s Gift to the Fashion World: The Canadian Tuxedo

Brian Hiatt, “The Rise of the Black Keys,” Rolling Stone (January 19, 2012)

As a general rule, I try to focus on references to Canada in books, but occasionally I’ll come across a mention in a magazine or other piece of pop-culture ephemera (is anything really ephemeral anymore?) that is just too good to ignore. This is one of those moments.

I’m not sure exactly how I stumbled on this Black Keys article, and it’s a few years old now, but it opens a door into a part of Canadian identity that we haven’t really dealt with here before, so it seemed worth considering. This is from the very opening of the article, when the author does his obligatory description of how cool the subject of the article is:

No one in this busy Hollywood organic coffee shop looks like they might have just sold out Madison Square Garden – least of all, perhaps, the compact, thick-bearded dude in the jean jacket shuffling toward a corner table. Dan Auerbach’s looks are striking enough: sharp-angled nose, bright blue eyes, floppy reddish hair. But his denim-on-denim outfit says “parking-lot attendant” as much as it does “rock star” (“I’m not afraid of the Canadian tuxedo,” he says, though at least the pale-blue jacket doesn’t match his black jeans) – and he carries himself with an almost wilful lack of flamboyance.

He’s so cool, he’s good-looking, he’s wildly successful but at the same time totally down to earth – and he’s wearing denim-on-denim! It’s actually Auerbach himself who identifies his look (if someone so cool and down to earth can even be said to have a “look”) as “the Canadian tuxedo,” showing that, among our many other accomplishments, our nation has also left its imprint on the fashion world.

Is this something to be proud of? It’s hard not to feel that there is something disparaging about the term “Canadian tuxedo,” as though we Canadians are such unsophisticated hicks that jeans with a jean jacket is the closest we can come to formal wear. And the line about “at least the pale-blue jacket doesn’t match his black jeans” – that “at least” seems to indicate that the Canadian tuxedo is a horribly unfashionable look, but the version of it that Auerbach is sporting isn’t quite as awful as it might be. (Note that, for the cover shoot, he swapped the denim jacket for the more conventional rock-star leather.)

And why is this look referred to as “the Canadian tuxedo”? Is it, in fact, a way for Americans to make fun of Canadian fashion sense? According to GQ magazine, the story is a little more complicated than that, and involves Levi’s, Bing Crosby and a Vancouver hotel. (Needless to say, there are other explanations floating around on the Internet.)

But, contrary to its ostensibly scruffy and lower-class reputation, the denim-on-denim look is one of this spring’s hottest fashion trends, having made appearances all over at Fashion Week in Paris. And, predictably, there’s a website devoted to images of people in Canadian tuxedos – including Beyonce and Barack Obama.

So our humble contribution to the fashion lexicon is clearly hitting the big time.