White drill/sharkskin dinner jacket

[buckskin]

I am looking to have a white dinner jacket made for the tropics (yes, somewhere like Malaya or Aden). I came across this passage from An Affair with Africa, in which the author, a young colonial officer about to go on his first posting to Tanganyika goes to a tropical outfitters in London, Baker's of Golden Square:

In the clothing department, a clerkly attendant drew attention to an assortment of spine pads - obsolete and ludicrous even in 1952 - and solar topees or 'Bombay bowlers'. These two were faintly risible relics of an earlier age; yet they were, I believe, uniquely comfortable, extremely light of weight and well-ventilated. And even then they were part of the wardrobe of expatriate officialdom in those territories - Kenya and Bechuanaland for example - where uniforms were regularly worn ... I was gently pressed to buy a white dress uniform, sun helmet and sword, bush jackets and baggy shorts, and a 'sharkskin' dinner jacket, but ended up with a white drill dinner jacket, a cummerbund, a budget-priced Palm Beach suit which was to last me the next ten years, and the snake-bite outfit.

I imagine the drill dinner jacket would probably be like a white naval mess jacket, completely unlined and unstructured? And what about the 'sharkskin' jacket?

 

[greekonomist]

I picture a man in a pith helmet.