What to Wear: American Smooth Competition

A Different Question Than Standard Asks

American Smooth and International Standard share four dances — Waltz, Tango, Foxtrot, Viennese Waltz — and almost nothing else about how they are performed. Standard is built inside a permanent closed hold. Smooth opens the hold. It separates the partners, sends them into tandem walks, drops them into shadow position, spins them out into single-arm holds, and then snaps them back into frame. The choreography is theatrical and the floor coverage is dramatic rather than continuous.

This single difference — that Smooth choreography breaks the frame on purpose — reshapes every element of the wardrobe. If you walked into a Smooth event wearing a Standard tailsuit and a Standard gown with wings, you would either look slightly out of place or, in the gown's case, actively trip over your own choreography.

The Men: Smooth Suits, Not Tailsuits

In Standard, the man wears a custom tailsuit — long tails, white tie, vest, the whole archaic kit. In Smooth, the man wears a smooth suit: a custom dance jacket, tailored from stretch fabrics, more contemporary in cut, often without tails. Some Smooth jackets are short and trim like a modern dinner jacket. Others use longer skirting and are cut closer to a frock coat. None of them are normal tuxedos and none of them are tailsuits.

The same warning that applies in Standard applies here, and arguably matters more: do not wear an off-the-rack tuxedo to a Smooth competition. The construction is wrong in the same ways. Off-the-rack jackets do not have the stretch panels under the arms or across the back, the shoulders are not engineered for raised arms, and the chest will not let you separate from your partner gracefully because the fabric was never meant to move that far.

What a smooth suit gets right is the open phase of the dance. When you release your partner into a tandem turn or a shadow walk, your jacket has to move with the line your body makes. A normal jacket loses that line; a smooth suit holds it. The trouser is similarly cut for movement — high-waisted, often with a flat or pleated front, suspenders rather than belt, and a slightly tapered leg so the line stays clean during a fan or a hover.

The shoe is the same as Standard: 1 inch heeled ballroom shoe, smooth or suede sole, often patent leather upper. This is one of the few places where the two genres share equipment.

The Women: Why Smooth Gowns Never Have Wings

This is the single most distinctive wardrobe rule in American Smooth, and the one that catches new competitors off guard most often: Smooth gowns do not have wings. Not "rarely have wings." Not "smaller wings." None.

The reason is functional, and it follows directly from how Smooth choreography is built. Smooth routines include:

• Open work, where partners separate and dance in single-arm or no-hold positions
• Tandem and shadow positions, where one partner stands directly behind the other
• Spins and free turns, where the woman's arms travel through full extensions away from the man's body
• Hand changes and underarm passes, where the partner's arm travels through the space the wing would occupy

Wings are large fabric panels attached at the wrist or upper arm. In a permanent closed hold, those panels live in the empty air around the couple. In Smooth, that air is full of partners' arms, hands, and bodies. A wing in Smooth would catch on the man's hand during a hand change, drag across the woman's face during a spin, and physically restrict the open arm extension that defines half the choreography.

So Smooth gowns are built for movement instead of line. They use heavy float in the skirt — sometimes more dramatic than Standard, because Smooth choreography sweeps the skirt through bigger arcs — but the upper body is left clean. Sleeves are cap-length, three-quarter, sleeveless, or built from sheer mesh. Decoration is lavish but kept inside the silhouette, not extended outside it.

Color and styling skew warmer and more individual than Standard. Where a Standard gown often reads as a crystalline single line, a Smooth gown reads as a moving figure inside a flowing skirt — and is judged accordingly.

Shoes for women in Smooth are closed-toe or open-toe court shoes with a 2 to 2.5 inch heel and suede sole, similar to Standard but often slightly more flexible because Smooth choreography includes more pivots and spins than Standard does.

Why the Aesthetic Reads as "Elegant Movement"

Standard's aesthetic is regal and disciplined; Smooth's is elegant and expressive. The wardrobe encodes the difference. The tailsuit signals a sustained shape; the smooth suit signals a body in motion. The winged gown signals a single united silhouette; the wingless gown signals a partnership that opens, separates, and returns.

When competitors describe Smooth as "the more theatrical of the two," they are describing both the choreography and the costume. Smooth lets the body show as a body. Standard subordinates the body to the line. Both are beautiful. They are not interchangeable.

For more on the technical and historical split between these traditions, see International vs American Ballroom. For the lineage that produced two different answers to the same set of dances, the history portal walks through the post-WWII development of American technique. And for shoe and dressmaker recommendations, the LODance gear guide covers Smooth-specific options.

The shorthand version: if your choreography breaks frame, your wardrobe has to let it.