What Is Cocktail Attire?

Wedding season is every season, and that means understanding the rules of cocktail attire is critical all throughout the year – especially when there is a strict dress code. It’s a familiar scenario: You’re invited to a wedding, an engagement party, or even just a nice get-together with friends, and the host requests this particular style of dress. It’s not formal but certainly not casual–making the risk of doing too much or too little pretty high.

While most of us know exactly what cocktail (or mocktail) hour is, the dressing piece of the occasion leaves a little more room for interpretation. Ahead what break down the history of the cocktail dress code, plus rules and tips around cocktail attire so you’re prepped next time that invite hits your mailbox.

What is cocktail attire?

In the simplest of terms, it’s a semi-formal style of dress typically worn on early evening and late afternoon occasions. “Cocktail attire was first popularized in the 1920s as women in the U.S. moved into the public social sphere and sought to find more individuality and shed the more confining gender stereotypes of the Edwardian era,” Michelle Gabriel, graduate program director of Glasgow Caledonian New York College (GCNYC), tells Vogue. During the Edwardian era, women’s dress was elaborate, including corsets, long skirts, and layers. In the decade following, the style of dress worn by flappers was a step in a more freeing direction with shorter hemlines and looser silhouettes, but still filled with the same level of detail and adornment.

“French couturiers like Chanel and Schiaparelli, increasingly dependent on American clients, took on the concept of cocktail dressing,” Gabriel says. “They offered luxurious loungy dressing for hostesses of private, high-class cocktail gatherings. Hollywood films featuring Mae West and Greta Garbo, and growing international travel of the 30s, helped to popularize these looks.”

Still, it wasn’t until decades later that the name itself was popularized by none other than Christian Dior. At the time, cocktail hour was becoming the norm in households as women began to host parties between the hours of 6 P.M. and 8 P.M. According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s website, “Christian Dior was the first to name the early evening frock a “cocktail” dress in the late 1940s, and in doing so allowed magazines, department stores, and rival Parisian and American designers to promote fashion with cocktail-specific terminology.” Dior’s New Look collection, which included dresses and sets with cinched waistlines and voluminous skirts, defined a generation of style that was more versatile than ever before.