Christmas Fashion & Style

Decoding the dress code

Christmas invitations use words loosely, and the same word means different things depending on who sent it. Festive almost always means "normal party clothes with one seasonal element" — a red dress, a velvet jacket, a good tie. It very rarely means a costume, and turning up in a full Santa suit to a "festive" dinner is a specific kind of memorable. Smart casual at a Christmas party means the smart end of that range, not the casual end. Black tie means a dinner jacket and a bow tie, and a Christmas-patterned bow tie is still a bow tie, so that one is fair game.

If the invitation says nothing at all, ask the host — but the safe default is to match the formality of the venue. A restaurant booking implies more than a house party, and a house party implies more than a pub.

The jumper question

The genuinely funny Christmas jumper is a cheap one with too much going on. The expensive "ironic" ones bought new every year miss the joke, because the joke was originally about wearing something your aunt knitted that nobody had the heart to refuse. Charity shops from mid-November onwards are where the good ones are, they cost almost nothing, and the money goes somewhere useful.

If you're buying new and want it to survive more than one season, check the fibre content rather than the price. Acrylic novelty knits pill badly after a couple of wears, which is fine for a one-night joke and annoying if you liked it.

Matching pyjamas, honestly

They photograph well and children love them, and the whole category exists for Christmas morning photographs. Two practical notes: buy them by early December because the specific size combination you need is what sells out, not the range as a whole; and check whether children's sets are flame-resistant treated or snug-fitting, because loose untreated nightwear near an open fire is the one real safety consideration in an otherwise unserious purchase.