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The smoking jacket
A smoking jacket is a soft velvet or quilted silk jacket meant for wearing at home after dinner, and the ancestor of the dinner jacket.
A smoking jacket is a soft, unstructured jacket in velvet or quilted silk with a shawl collar, frogged or corded fastenings and turn-back cuffs, worn at home after dinner. It is the ancestor of the dinner jacket and remains, strictly, a domestic garment.
A domestic garment
The point was tobacco. A man retiring to smoke would put on a jacket he did not mind smelling of smoke, protecting his evening clothes; hence velvet, which does not crease, and a soft unstructured build.
The dinner jacket descends directly from it, which is why black tie in French and Italian is still called a smoking. The two garments then separated: one went out to dinner, the other stayed at home.
What to look for
A shawl collar faced in silk or in the same velvet; turn-back cuffs; frogged or corded fastenings rather than conventional buttons; a soft, unstructured build with little or no padding.
Cotton velvet is the practical cloth and silk velvet the luxurious one. Quilted silk is the older form and is now rare.
Wearing one now
Strictly it is not evening wear and not outdoor wear; it belongs at home. In practice it is worn to informal black-tie occasions in place of a dinner jacket, which is a departure from the rule that has been going on long enough to be its own convention.
The one thing that does not work is treating it as a sport coat. Velvet with frogged fastenings in daylight is a costume, and the garment's whole history is about being indoors after dark.
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