page_title: Full dress uniform
section_title: Royal Navy
hierarchical_section_title: Full dress uniform / Full dress uniform by country / United Kingdom / Royal Navy
caption_attribution_description: English: Vice-Admiral Sir Philip Alexander Watson KBE, LVO
context_page_description: Full dress uniform or parade dress uniform is the most formal type of uniforms used by military, police, fire and other public uniformed services for official parades, ceremonies, and receptions, including private ones such as marriages and funerals. Full dress uniforms typically include full-size orders and medals insignia. Styles tend to trace back to uniforms used during the 19th century, although the 20th century saw the adoption of mess-dress styled full-dress uniforms. Designs may depend on regiment or service branch. In Western dress codes, full dress uniform is a permitted supplementary alternative equivalent to the civilian white tie for evening wear or morning dress for day wear – sometimes collectively called full dress – although military uniforms are the same for day and evening wear. As such, full dress uniform is the most formal uniform, followed by the mess dress uniform.
  Although full dress uniforms are often brightly coloured and ornamented with gold epaulettes, braids, lanyards, lampasses, etc., most originated as practical uniforms that, with the adoption of even more practical uniforms, were relegated to ceremonial functions.
context_section_description: Since the mid-eighteenth century, when naval uniforms were introduced, Flag Officers had different full-dress and undress versions, the latter being worn from day to day, the former only for formal occasions. By the late nineteenth century, an officer's full dress uniform consisted of a navy double-breasted tailcoat with white facings edged in gold (on the collar and cuff-slashes), gold lace (indicating rank) on the cuffs, epaulettes, sword and sword-belt, worn with gold-laced trousers and a cocked hat. This order of uniform lasted through the first half of the twentieth century, and was worn by Prince Philip at the Coronation of Elizabeth II. In 1956, however, it was abolished, leaving No. 1 uniform as the most formal order of dress. Subsequently, in 1960, full dress uniform was reintroduced in the form of Ceremonial Day Dress. Worn only by limited categories of senior officers this is very similar to the old full dress, but without fringed epaulettes and slashes, and worn with a peaked cap.
caption: Vice Admiral Philip Watson in ceremonial day dress. Introduced in 1960, ceremonial day dress is a variant of the Royal Navy's full dress uniform that was taken out of service in 1956.
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