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Canadian Thanksgiving falls on October 12 this year, which gives you a little under two weeks to settle a question we hear every October from men who can dress for a board meeting in their sleep: what to wear to Thanksgiving dinner. The boardroom has rules, and rules can be learned. Your mother-in-law's dining room in Laval has no rules at all. Only consequences.
So here is the principle we offer across the counter every fall: dress for the table, not the room. Thanksgiving is three hours in an overheated house, seated, eating seriously. The suit that serves you Monday through Friday fails twice at once — too formal for family, too unforgiving for a second helping. But the other ditch is deeper. Arriving in what you would wear to rake leaves tells the cook exactly how much the afternoon means to you, and she will remember. The answer lives in the middle, and this October the middle of our store is better stocked than it has been in years.
What to Wear to Thanksgiving Dinner: The Formula
A knitted layer with the presence of a jacket. Under it, a proper collar or a fine-gauge crew. Below, trousers with some forgiveness built in. Dark, warm colours up top — brown, loden, rust, navy. We will say the unflattering part out loud: dark cloth forgives gravy, and we have never once met a man who finished Thanksgiving dinner as clean as he started it.
On the trousers, one honest instruction. Wear the pair that fits you this October, not the pair that fitted you in April. You will be sitting for hours, and a waistband that pinches at two o'clock is unbearable by five. A grey flannel with a touch of stretch holds its line through the whole meal, and a well-cut five-pocket does the same for more casual tables. The fixed-waist worsted you wear downtown was engineered for standing in meetings, not for three services and a pie.
The Overshirt Earns Its Seat at the Table
This is the first time we have written about Phil Petter in these pages, and Thanksgiving is exactly why we bought from them. They are an Austrian knitwear house, and what they do better than almost anyone is build garments that read as tailoring and wear as knitwear. Their brown and green houndstooth wool-cotton overshirt ($610) is the family-dinner jacket we have been waiting for: collar, cuffs, and a pattern that says you made an effort, in a jersey that moves like a cardigan when you reach across the table for the squash. The houndstooth sits in browns and greens — October's own palette, and squarely in the brown lean we have been backing all season.
Under it, keep it simple. An open-collared shirt if the family skews formal, a fine merino crew if it does not. Our knit wall is at full strength right now, and a flat-knit crew under an overshirt is the most comfortable a man can be while still looking like a guest rather than a teenager.
The Sock Rule Nobody Warns You About
Here is the detail that separates a Montreal Thanksgiving from most style advice written elsewhere: your shoes are coming off at the door. Whatever you planned from the ankle down, the hallway will edit it. Which means your socks are not an afterthought — for most of the afternoon they are your shoes. A pair of Marcoliani merino socks in a deliberate colour says you knew; a thinning heel says you did not. Check for the toe about to come through before you leave the house, not after. The quiet consolation: since your shoes retire to the hallway by minute two, suede is entirely safe to wear, whatever the forecast says.
For the Walk Between Turkey and Pie
Every family has one member who insists on the walk around the block between the meal and dessert, and in mid-October that walk has a bite to it. This is scarf weather arriving on schedule. Phil Petter again: their taupe mélange tweed scarf ($235), spun from alpaca, wool, and cotton, is warm without bulk and sits in exactly the mushroom-brown register that flatters everything else on this page.
Two refinements before you go. If you are hosting, dress half a step above your guests — it is your table, and the effort honours it. And if this is your first Thanksgiving with her family, wear the collar. You can relax next year, once they have decided they like you. The first impression only happens once, and it happens over turkey.
One last practical note. If the knitwear from last fall fits differently than you remember, or the flannels need letting out before the 12th — no judgment, that is what October is for — our tailors work in-house on Decarie and turnarounds are short this early in the month. Book a visit this week and sit down to dinner comfortable. That, as much as anything on the table, is worth giving thanks for.
