The tuxedo arrived in a garment bag from a rental shop in Vienna. Classic black, satin lapels, matching bow tie, patent leather shoes two sizes too loose because they had run out of my size. I hung it on the back of my hotel room door, stepped back, and felt a surge of what I can only describe as misplaced confidence. This was it. This was the uniform. This was what magicians wore.
The gig was a corporate event in Graz — about sixty people, mid-range budget, a technology company celebrating a product launch. The dress code for guests was business casual. Jeans and blazers. Button-downs with no ties. Sneakers that cost more than my entire outfit.
I walked in wearing a tuxedo, and the room looked at me the way you look at someone who has shown up to a barbecue in a ballgown. Not hostile. Not amused, exactly. Just… confused. Who is this person, and why does he think this is a formal event?
That was the moment I started rethinking everything I thought I knew about how a performer should dress.
The Tuxedo Default
Here is what I had absorbed, unconsciously, from years of watching magic on television and in YouTube clips: magicians wear tuxedos. Or at least they wear formal black. The image is deeply embedded — the figure in black and white, the tailcoat with the tails, the top hat, the white gloves. It is the visual shorthand for “magician” in the same way that a stethoscope is the visual shorthand for “doctor.”
The problem is that this shorthand is about forty years out of date. The tuxedo era of magic corresponds to a specific period in entertainment history — the Las Vegas showroom era, the television variety show era, the age when performers worked on stages with curtains and footlights and the audience sat in rows wearing their own formal attire. In that context, a tuxedo made perfect sense. You dressed to match the venue, and the venue was a formal room.
When I read Dan Harlan’s lecture on magic as theater — the Tarbell Lesson 83 material — one line about costumes stopped me cold. The core principle was simple: “Even if you want to fit in with everybody else, just wear something that’s a little bit better, a little bit different, a little bit more stylish, a little bit more you than everybody else.” Not a costume from another era. Not a uniform from a profession the audience does not recognize. Something better. Something that signals you are the host of this experience, not a visitor from 1985.
That principle changed everything for me.
What a Tuxedo Actually Communicates
Let me be specific about what went wrong in Graz, because the issue was not that I looked bad. The tuxedo fit reasonably well. I was groomed, pressed, presentable. The issue was the message the outfit was sending.
A tuxedo at a casual corporate event communicates several things simultaneously, and none of them are helpful:
First, it communicates distance. The performer has dressed in a way that separates them from the audience by several degrees of formality. This creates a barrier. The audience does not think “this person is one of us, and they are about to share something remarkable.” They think “this person has arrived from somewhere else, and they are going to put on a show.” The distinction matters enormously. One framing invites connection. The other invites observation from a distance.
Second, it communicates a specific kind of magic. The tuxedo says “I am going to produce doves and pull rabbits from hats.” It does not say “I am going to blow your mind.” It primes the audience for a particular genre of performance — the old-fashioned, family-friendly, slightly cheesy kind — and if your material is anything other than that, you are fighting your own outfit for the first ten minutes.
Third, it communicates effort in the wrong direction. A tuxedo says “I put a lot of thought into looking like a magician.” What I wanted to communicate was “I put a lot of thought into being excellent at what I do.” The costume was stealing the message.
I did not articulate any of this at the time. At the time, I just felt that something was off, that the room was not connecting the way I wanted it to connect, and that my clothes had something to do with it. It took reflection — and reading, and more performances — to understand what had happened.
The Fitzkee Principle
Dariel Fitzkee, writing in the 1940s, was already warning about this. His position on costuming was specific: never appear in any costume other than the latest in cut and style. Not the latest from ten years ago. Not a classic that has aged well. The latest. The current. The now.
Fitzkee understood something that many magicians still resist: your audience lives in the present. They consume entertainment from the present. They follow fashion from the present. When you walk on stage dressed in a style that belongs to a previous era, you are immediately telling them that your art also belongs to a previous era. You are dating yourself before you have said a single word.
This does not mean you need to chase every trend. It means you need to look contemporary. Current. Like someone who exists in the same world as the people watching you.
Fitzkee was relentless about this because he saw the same problem in the 1940s that persists today. Magicians were dressing in styles that had been dated for decades, using apparatus that looked like it belonged in a museum, and then wondering why audiences did not take them seriously. His diagnosis was blunt: if ninety-nine percent of magic performances look outdated and amateurish, the entire field gets classified that way. Every performer who shows up in a costume from a previous generation hurts everyone else in the profession.
What Replaced the Tuxedo
After the Graz experience, I started paying attention to what the best modern performers wore. Not just magicians — keynote speakers, comedians, musicians, anyone who commanded a stage in front of a contemporary audience.
The pattern was consistent. The best performers dressed slightly above the audience. Not dramatically above. Not in a different category entirely. Just one notch higher. If the audience was in jeans and t-shirts, the performer was in dark jeans and a sport coat. If the audience was in business casual, the performer was in a tailored blazer with a pocket square. If the audience was in suits, the performer was in a better suit.
The key word is “slightly.” The goal is not to outclass the audience. The goal is to signal that you have put thought into this moment, that you take the occasion seriously, that you are the host rather than a guest — without creating a wall of formality between you and the people you are trying to reach.
For me, as someone who performs primarily at corporate events and keynotes in Austria, this translated into a specific wardrobe decision. I retired the tuxedo permanently. In its place: a well-fitted dark suit with a distinctive element — a textured blazer, an unusual pocket square, a shirt in a color that stands out without screaming. Something that says “I am the most interesting person in this room” without saying “I am from a different planet.”
The Character Question
Harlan frames costume in theatrical terms. In his framework, everything you wear on stage is a costume, whether you think of it that way or not. A t-shirt is a costume. Jeans are a costume. A watch is a costume element. The question is not whether you are wearing a costume — you always are — but whether your costume is telling the right story.
Harlan’s own approach is illuminating. He describes his performance look as “the host of the best party you’ve ever been to.” Blue velvet jacket, striped black tie, gray shirt, black slacks. Not formal. Not casual. Somewhere in between — elevated, distinctive, personal. You see him and you think: this person knows how to show you a good time.
That is the story a performer’s clothing should tell. Not “I am a magician.” Not “I am here to work.” Not “I rented this outfit.” The story should be: I am someone you want to spend time with. I am someone who has good taste and good judgment. I am someone who belongs at the front of this room.
When I co-founded Vulpine Creations with Adam Wilber, this became a practical consideration, not just an aesthetic one. We were building a brand. The visual identity of the people behind that brand mattered. And the visual identity of a magic company in the twenty-first century could not be tuxedos and top hats. It needed to be modern, sharp, and relevant.
The Venue-Matching Exercise
Here is the practical exercise I now do before every performance. It takes two minutes and has eliminated the wardrobe misstep entirely.
I ask the event organizer one question: “What will your guests be wearing?” Not what the dress code is — people often dress below the stated dress code. What will they actually be wearing? If the organizer says “business casual, but honestly most people will be in jeans and nice tops,” then I know my target: one level above jeans and nice tops.
Then I lay out my outfit in my hotel room — still my eternal practice studio, still the place where all the real preparation happens — and I look at it. I ask myself: if I saw someone wearing this walk into the event, would I think “that person looks sharp” or would I think “that person looks like they are going to a different party”?
If the answer is the second one, I adjust. Every time.
What We Lost When We Lost the Tuxedo
I want to be fair to the tuxedo, because there is something it did that modern dress does not do as easily. The tuxedo announced authority. When you walked on stage in a tailcoat, the audience immediately understood that you were the performer, that you had authority over this space, and that they were meant to pay attention.
Modern dress requires you to earn that authority through other means. Your posture, your voice, your opening line, your command of the space — these are what establish you as the person in charge, not your outfit. This is harder. It demands more of the performer. But it also creates a deeper connection, because the authority is coming from you rather than from a costume.
The tuxedo was a shortcut. And like most shortcuts, it worked well in a narrow context but failed outside of it. In a Las Vegas showroom in 1975, the tuxedo was perfect. In a conference room in Salzburg in 2024, it is a liability.
The Ongoing Experiment
My wardrobe for performance is still evolving. I have settled on a core approach — tailored, contemporary, slightly elevated — but I continue to experiment with the details. A different jacket. A bolder color. A simpler look. Every performance is a data point, and the data tells me what works and what does not.
The one thing I know with certainty is that the tuxedo is not coming back. Not for me, not for the kind of work I do, not for the audiences I serve. The tuxedo belongs to a glorious chapter in magic’s history, and I respect that history deeply. But I am not performing in that chapter. I am performing in this one.
And in this chapter, the best thing you can wear is something that makes the audience think: that person looks like they belong here. That person looks like the most interesting version of the people in this room. That person looks like someone I want to watch.
Not because they are wearing a costume from a different century. Because they are dressed like someone who understands exactly where they are and who they are talking to.
The tuxedo had its moment. It was a great moment. But it belongs in 1985, along with the top hat, the dove pan, and the idea that looking like a magician is more important than connecting like a human being.