Robin Givhan wisely observes that Trump’s catastrophic fashion choices in England were not just a sign of bad taste:
For any man to bungle white-tie dress — something so regimented, so steeped in tradition, so well-documented — he must be a man who doesn’t bother with the details, who doesn’t avail himself of ready expertise, who refuses to be a student of history or even of Google. White-tie attire is more science than art. The fit of the tailcoat is just so. Great flapping yards of the white waistcoat are not meant to hang below the jacket. The sleeves should not stretch to the base of the thumb. The jacket is not to be buttoned. And so on. White tie is fact-based. One cannot fudge it. One does not make white-tie decisions based on one’s gut, lest one end up with the gut overly exposed.
The president’s iteration of white tie at the state banquet at Buckingham Palace was, in a word, a mess. The waistcoat was too long and too tight. The tailcoat did not fit. The trousers were voluminous. And the man himself looked so ill at ease in the whole unfortunate kit that his awkwardness loomed over him like Pig-Pen’s dust cloud.