Tuxedo Junction: On the WSJ Taste page this week, tradition-minded musician Eric Felton looks at what passes for formal dress these days:

The Hollywood male hasn't always been that clueless--or so eager to abandon his role setting high style for middle America. Once upon a time, leading men knew clothes.

Take Cary Grant. Engaged to star in the Cole Porter biopic "Night and Day," the actor soon realized the script was a stinker. And so he focused his attention on what really mattered, nearly driving the director to quit with punctilious costume demands. At one point Grant brought production to a halt, standing on his God-given right to expose exactly one-eighth of an inch of shirt cuff beyond his tuxedo sleeve, not the sloppy quarter-inch the bumpkins over in wardrobe had given him. The movie may have been a disaster, but Cary Grant looked good.

His paradox conclusion, that the tuxedo is both aristocratic and democratic, is refreshingly true. Think of all those old rags-to-riches books and movies in which the main character can "blend" into high society by dint of knowing the true sartorial secrets. I always think of the socially climbing Monty Clift in "The Heiress." I love the scene where Ralph Richardson gives him a subtle sniff and remarks on the quality of his after shave. "That's a fine bay rum you're wearing," he says (or something like that). Who the hell would ever say that upon meeting a prospective son-in-law? But the point is, Clift has literally dressed himself for the part. And even if Richardson can see through the ersatz respectability, Olivia de Havilland is fooled.