Ties no longer binding: '21' Club eases dress code permanently

Nation's Restaurant News, Feb 10, 1997 by Milford Prewitt

NEW YORK -- The `21', Club, a standard bearer of fine dining whose patrician style captured generations of deal makers and power players, is dressing down its strict dress code.

Men no longer have to wear ties -- at least for lunch.

An experiment last summer at the 76-year-old institution has become a permanent policy change, largely as a result of "dress-down days," which are popular among many of the `21' Club's corporate loyalists, Bryan McGuire, general manager, confirmed.

"We're trying to keep abreast of corporate America's dressing down, so to speak," McGuire said. "With so many of our guests working for companies with dress-down Mondays and dress-down Fridays, we thought we should relax our dress code a bit."

McGuire emphasized that the liberalized dress code applies only to lunch. Jeans remain verboten, and sport jackets are still a must. He said that, based on the experiment last summer, the change should prove to be a hit with Midtown shoppers.

"Relaxing the dress requirement at lunch should really help us with visitors and vacationers who shop along Fifth Avenue" McGuire said. "You'd have people shopping at Gucci, Henri Bendel, Bergdorf's, Cartier, dressed to the nines but turned away because the men were not wearing ties.

"We want to make them more welcome. You don't make any friends turning people away."

Among New York's old-line and revered dining establishments, The Rainbow Room, La Cote Basque and perhaps two other classic French restaurants are among the last of the Old Guard, where ties and jackets are required at all times. The Four Seasons, the `21', Club's arch-rival in the power-dining niche, dropped the requirement for ties several years ago.

Born as a speakeasy at the height of Prohibition, the `21' Club grew into an institution and epitomized power dining for industrial heads, sports celebrities, politicians, movie stars, and other movers and shakers. The image of the restaurant as a bastion for the rich and famous, however, is one the new owners have been attempting to erase ever since Orient-Express Hotels purchased the West 56th Street landmark in the summer of 1995.

Although the restaurant, with a $56 check average, still courts an affluent crowd, the move to relax its male patrons' attire is part of a broader effort to make the restaurant more approachable to mainstream diners. Last summer McGuire said he was surprised by the number of people who still think the restaurant is a private men's club.