the club's first Autumn Ball in October 1886 wearing "a tailless dress coat". Although it is not known whether this garment was a mess jacket or a conventional dinner jacket, it has no doubt cemented the tailcoat substitute's association with Tuxedo Park in the mind of the public.

An essay in the Tuxedo Park archives attributes the jacket's importation to America to resident James Brown Potter, a merchant banker who had worked in London for Brown Brothers. However, this claim for Potter