The hired dinner jacket

An original imagined personal account of wearing formal clothes for an event.

The dinner jacket arrived on a hanger with shoulders more decisive than mine. On the bedroom door, it seemed to be waiting for somebody who already knew where to stand.

I put it on carefully. The cloth settled across my back, the sleeves found my wrists and the mirror supplied a version of me prepared to be introduced. I tried a nod. It looked borrowed.

At the event, I discovered that impressive clothes do not tell you what to do with your hands. I held a glass, put it down and immediately wished for something else to hold. Across the room, another guest was negotiating the same difficulty with a folded programme. We smiled with the relief of people whose uniforms had failed to conceal a shared question.

Later, I forgot the jacket while listening to a story. My shoulders became my own again. When somebody asked a question, I answered before arranging the person in the mirror to deliver it.

Back home, the jacket resumed its place on the hanger. It looked as certain as before. I hung my ordinary shirt beside it and went to bed, leaving them to discuss which of us had supplied the conversation.

Examine the methods the writer uses to present self-consciousness in formal clothes.