Important Inventory Update (11-16-2023)
Our inventory of cummerbunds is currently exhausted due to unusually high demand and a severe shortage of MIL-SPEC fabric. You may still add a cummerbund to your order at this time and when production resumes we will process the oldest orders first, but we cannot guarantee a specific shipment date. Alternatively, you can postpone your order until we have begun production, but be aware that orders will be fulfilled in the order in which they were received and that back-orders will be given precedence.
We apologize for the inconvenience and will update this page when production has resumed.
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Like so many civilian clothing items, cummerbunds became popular in Western culture because of their wear by military personnel—in this case British officers stationed in India who observed them being worn by locals as part of their formal dining wear.
Realizing they served essentially the same function as their own waistcoats and dealing with heat they’d never imagined before arriving at this far-flung outpost of the empire, the British opted for the cummerbunds in the mid-1800s to create a more comfortable dinner uniform. With the introduction of the Tuxedo and eventually a “black tie” dress code, civilians borrowed the cummerbunds from the British officers’ wardrobe to replace the black tuxedo waistcoat just as British had replaced their military waistcoats with cummerbunds decades earlier.
In the Coast Guard Auxiliary, cummerbunds are prescribed for wear only with the Dinner Dress Blue Jacket uniform. We offer them in the two sizes prescribed in the USCG Auxiliary Manual, 5 inches in width for males and 3-1/2 inches for females. Cummerbunds are worn pleats up, a style that was handed down from a time when it was not uncommon for gentlemen to use the pleats as storage area for ticket stubs or receipts from the opera or symphony.