A promenade dance or promenade, commonly called a prom in American English, is a dance party for high school students. It may be offered in semi-formal black tie or informal suit for boys, and evening gowns for girls. This event is typically held at or near the end of the school year. There may be individual junior and senior proms or they may be combined.
A typical gathering, with boys in tuxedos/dinner suit, and girls in formal dresses with corsages on their wrists
Close-up of the corsages
Decorating for prom, students put finishing touches on a ballroom at a banquet hall
A crowd gathers for a group photo at a junior prom in Canada, 1928.
Black tie is a semi-formal Western dress code for evening events, originating in British and North American conventions for attire in the 19th century. In British English, the dress code is often referred to synecdochically by its principal element for men, the dinner suit or dinner jacket. In American English, the equivalent term tuxedo is common. The dinner suit is a black, midnight blue or white two- or three-piece suit, distinguished by satin or grosgrain jacket lapels and similar stripes along the outseam of the trousers. It is worn with a white dress shirt with standing or turndown collar and link cuffs, a black bow tie, typically an evening waistcoat or a cummerbund, and black patent leather dress shoes or court pumps. Accessories may include a semi-formal homburg, bowler, or boater hat. For women, an evening gown or other fashionable evening attire may be worn.
A man wearing a dinner suit with shawl lapels, a cummerbund, a black bowtie and oxfords
Illustration of British peaked lapel and shawl collar dinner jackets, 1898. As substitutes for tailcoats, dinner jackets were originally worn with full dress accessories, including white waist coat.
Russian Serge Wolkonsky in black tie
1888 American tuxedo/dinner jacket, sometimes called a dress sack